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§/iforavy of (ftanpe^. 

<&<fiyi^At^M. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, 



OBLIGATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, 



A REVIEW 

OF HIGH CHURCH PRINCIPLES IN RELATION TO CIVIL AND 
RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 



A. D. EDDY 

Newark, N. J.- 



S » 



" Two classes of religious opinions are now, and probably for the last time, in 
conflict, the Catholic and the Genevan." 

Dr. Pusey. 
" The precious spark of liberty (was) kindled and preserved by the Puritans 
alone, and it is to this Sect, that the English owe the whole freedom of their 
constitution." 

Hume, 



NEW-YORK: 
S. T A Y LOR & CO 

145 NASSAU-STREET. 






- 
u u 



L 2.*2- 



Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1843, by 
John S. Taylor, in the Clerk's office of the District Court, of the 
Southern District of New-York. •*" 



7 






•WILLIAM S. DORR, PRINTER, 
183 Fulton-street. 



* • . 






c •.-..; /^ A.%. tfC". > 3 ^ " : **^ * 



ADVERTISEMENT 



Tee leading sentiments of the following pages were pre- 
sented to the congregation of which the author is the stated 
minister, on the occasion of the last State Thanksgiving. From 
the business, political and religious aspect of this city, as well 
as of the country generally, the author felt it due to himself 
and to his congregation, to submit them to their consideration. 
The unexpected interest with which they were received, and the 
attention which they have excited from other sources, forbid 
that he should decline the request for their publication, in a 
new and more extended form, sustained by such references 
and authorities as may be relied upon. There are times when 
men must speak in defense of their own principles, even 
though those of others may thereby be called in question. 
The necessity which has been laid upon the author of these 
pages to do so, at this time, is better known and felt, than 
necessary or proper, fully to state. This necessity is, with 
him, a matter of sincere regret ; yet, it has been his aim and 
effort to speak in love and for truth. 

Newark, N. /., Feb., 1843, 



CONTENTS. 



TAGH. 



Government in General : Its Origin and Claims 13 

The Jewish Commonwealth ........ 16 

Dangerous tendency of Party Spirit. . 22 

Religious Principle the chief security of Government. . . 24 
The American Government founded on the Principles of 
Protestant Christianity, and for the Purposes of Civil and 

Religious Liberty 26 

Discordant Elements and conflicting Interests 28 

Religious Character of the Continental Congress and of the 

Administration of Washington. . . • 29 

The subsequent Prevalence of Infidelity 33 

The Necessity of a correct Public Sentiment, and of the 
Christian Virtues, to correct the Evils of the Govern- 
ment 43 

The Importance of maintaining the Supremacy of the Laws. 49 
The Value of Inviolate Faith in the Fulfillment of Contracts. 51 
The Duty cf selecting Men as Rulers of Intelligence and of 

unimpeached Moral Integrity 59 

The Influence of Religious Principles and Ecclesiatical 

Organizations, on the Civil Institutions of the Country. 65 
High Church Principles hostile to the peculiar Republican 

Institutions of our Country 76 

!• 



YI CONTENTS. 

Extraordinary Powers which they confer upon one Man. . . 78 

History of these Principles 83 

The " Divine Right" and "Apostolical Succession." ... 85 
Origin of the distinctions in the Christian Ministry. ... 98 
The High Church System a departure from the original 

principles of the English Church 109 

Views of Archbishop Whately. '. .. 114 

The Origin of Liturgies and Forms of Worship, their Influ- 
ence, &c 120 

The Influonce of High Church Principles on Evangelical 

Piety . 127 

The Doctrines of the English Church at the Reformation 

decidedly Calvinistic 134 

The Conditions of Salvation maintained by High Church 

writers, opposed to the Word of God , 138 

The Influence of these Principles on those who are educated 

in their belief. 143 

Their Practical Tendency the same as Romanism, and de- 
structive of Moral Distinctions, and of the practical and 
saving efficacy of the Doctrine of the Trinity. . . . 145 
Concluding Remarks. .......... ^ .... .. 150- 



INTRODUCTION, 



TO THE MEMBERS OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN 
CHURCH AND CONGREGATION,, 

IN THE CITY OF NEWARK, N. Jt 

To the recent proclamation of our Chief Magistrate, we are 
indebted for another of those interesting occasions, when, with 
the changes of the seasons, we are summoned to acknowledge 
our mercies, in gratitude to our Heavenly Father. I love to 
recall the occasion that gave rise to the institution of an 
American Thanksgiving. It arose among the usages of times 
primitive in this country, which stand, and I trust will long 
stand, venerated memorials of the sterling integrity, intellectual 
strength and evangelical piety of our fathers. 

They had encountered many a calamity. The winter, fa- 
mine, pestilence, savage war and the deep wilderness, were all 
fresh before them. Many r oft repeated seasons of fasting and 
prayer they had observed. Amid calamities, they may have 
forgotten mercy, and failed in filial reliance upon the Father of 
goodness. 

Another day of humiliation being proposed, it was suggested 
that the divine goodness as w T ell as chastisement claimed re- 
gard. Instead of a fast, a day of thanksgiving was designated, 
and our Puritan ancestors originated that institution, which 
has been commended to our regard by the Executive of this 
Commonwealth. 

The instrument that convened us, speaks of general peace, 
freedom from pestilence, and of plenteous harvests, and, above 



V11I INTRODUCTION, 

all, we have p^sented the eeligion of Jesus Christ, as claiming 
pre-eminently our unfeigned thankfulness. In your name, and 
as one of the ministers of that religion, I thank the GOVERNOR 
of our State, for this open and manly tribute of respect to our 
common Christianity. Our civil rulers would not be honored 
less, if they more often and highly honored God ; and our con- 
fidence in them is proportionate to their fear of Him. While 
the blessings of a common providence are enriched by the civil 
relations and immunities with which we enjoy them, these 
relations and immunities borrow their chief support from the 
gospel of Christ. Hence, Christianity does not overlook civil 
government ; nor does government, in its wise administration, 
overlook religion. The one is essential to the high ends of the 
other, and religion is the purest, and best when diffusing the 
leaven of its sanctifying influence through every department of 
our social economy. 

Though there is no necessary connexion between the exter- 
nal order and framework of Christianity, and the polity of the 
commonwealth, there must ever be, in every well regulated 
community, the diffusive influence, and elastic power of Chris- 
tianity, to control the minds and hearts of men, in the relations 
of civil and political life. There is no intellectual culture 
nor moral perfectibility of our race ; no wisdom or form in 
human government and laws, which can dispense with the 
spirit and teachings of a divine religion. Every experiment 
has proved a failure and an offense, entailing weakness and a 
curse. The nation and kingdom that will not serve (God) 
shall perish. 

The favorable manner which many of the principles dis- 
cussed in the following pages were received, when delivered, 
on the anniversary of our State Thanksgiving, has induced me 
to submit them to your disposal in a more extended form. 
They are commended to your serious consideration, with the 
hope that you may better appreciate the responsibilities of the 
Christian Citizen, and more highly prize and enjoy the immu- 
nities which our civil and religious institutions confer. That 
the political aspect of the country is without many alarming 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

indications we cannot believe, and that existing evils will pass 
away, without our judicious efforts to remove them, is not to 
be expected. In the remedy or endurance of these evils, moral 
and religious principle is to be chiefly relied upon as the most 
efficient agent. 

In the discussion of both political and religious questions, 
from my uniform freedom from participation in party politics, 
and from controversy in religion, you will not suppose that I 
am engaging in the one or courting the other. I intend to 
have nothing to do with either. Yet I would contribute in 
my humble measure, to allay the violence of party in the state, 
and to moderate the unwarrantable zeal of sectarian re li- 
gionists. 

While civil governments greatly affect religion, in aiding or 
checking the diffusion of its spirit, and shaping its eccle- 
siastical organization ; religion does much towards imparting 
vitality to government, and mitigating « r increasing the 
severity of its features. Hence the iron arm of pagan govern- 
ments; the despotic rule of the Mahomedan and Chinese 
empires, and the almost equal tyranny of Spain and the Italian 
States. It is from this same reciprocal -action of state policy 
and religion, that we meet everywhere, with the darkness and 
cruelty of the Romish communion, the most restricted rights 
of citizenship among the people. We find the mixed and 
anomalous confederacies of Germany, Holland and Switzer- 
land, with the equally anomalous character of the churches of 
the Heidelberg and Helvetic faith : the kingdom of Great 
Britain, with its republican and aristocratic Parliament, and 
its nominal Monarchy, clinging to its own fading shadow, with 
its unstable church, as crowding dissenters and a teeming- 
population are demanding the fullest liberty of the gospel. 
And hence it is we meet the solitary spectacle of our free 
institutions, with the Scotch Presbytery shorn of its original 
and unscriptural assumptions, and Independency, in its various 
forms, reserving to itself its inherent rights and acknowledging 
no superior, but its divine Master. Any ecclesiastical polity- 
harmonizing with other forms of civil government, is obviousl 



X INTRODUCTION. 

not indigenous to our soil, and, whatever may be its pretensions 
to a heavenly origin in its outward framework, receives but 
little sympathy from our free institutions, and its ultimate 
influence upon our civil polity is a subject of no ordinary 
interest to every Christian citizen. 

It is from these considerations that I shall speak freely, and 
I hope kindly, of both political and religious institutions, as 
found existing among us; and as these are favorable to the 
stability of our government and the growth of a spiritual reli- 
gion, they claim our warmest confidence and support. Our civil 
and religious principles are our richest and dearest inheritance; 
and the time has arrived, when it is our imperious duty to 
sneak in their defense. You are not wholly ignorant of the 
circumstances which claim this, at my hands, at the present 
lime. 

There are a few subjects connected with our civil and 
religious interests, which are not sufficiently considered even 
ty the most intelligent classes of the Christian community. 
To some of these, it is my duty and desire to direct your 
attention. 

There is a natural concentration of power, which leads 
imperceptibly and rapidly to complete despotism, alike in the 
church and in the state. And this is the most rapid, and diffi- 
cult to resist or recall, not where it is claimed by hereditary 
right or violently usurped, but where it is delegated by popular 
consent, conferred and received, at first, for the purpose of 
conscience and religion. 

It is here that Christianity, or the visible church, opens its 
instructive and warning records. The gospel, at first, breathed 
entire " liberty:" that was its "spirit." It marked the age of 
" evangelical Christianity," memorable and bright through 
apostolical times, and for near two hundred years ; when this 
catholic " liberty," passing from fraternal supervision, yielded 
to ecclesiastical control. The Word of God was sole arbiter 
in the first ; the interpretations and decisions of church coun- 
cils, in the second. While the " power of the spirit" clothed 
the one, as with the radiance of charity ; the energies of the 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

earthly arm, in God's name, without his love, invested the 
other. 

From the church, power gradually and insensibly passed 
into the hands of her clergy, with whom she left the settle- 
ment of her faith and discipline, and felt relieved from mental 
effort and moral responsibility. 

A farther concentration of power succeeded, and in seven 
hundred years after Christ, a solitary man is found enthroned 
in the spiritual empire of God, his august Vicegerent ! This 
is the concentration of religious power. 

No less natural and certain is the tendency to concentration 
in the powers of the state. Supremacy here is ever tending 
from the many to the few, with a rapidity always in propor- 
tion as the strong coercions of government are required, or 
men are unprepared to govern themselves ; till recoiling from 
the blasting tempests of a wild, gregarious infidelity of igno- 
rance and blood, they fly for shelter to the bosom of an iron 
despotism. 

The gospel reverts this fearful tendency of concentration, 
and would throw power back from the few to the many. And 
this it does, not by any direct and forcible action on the func- 
tions of government, but by fitting society for self-control : or 
in other words, by rendering legislative enactments, govern- 
mental restraints and coercion needless, so that the vast, dele- 
gated power to frame and enforce laws shall be comparatively 
unnecessary. Whes. men are intelligent and moral enough to 
govern themselves, that is, to act right, there will be no such 
demand for this vast array of legislative, judicial and martial 
power. 

Thus Christ left his church, instinct with his spirit divine ; 
Himself its only Head. Thus he would make the world, a 
commonwealth of charity, its every law fulfilled in love ; the 
kingdom, and the greatness of the kingdom, under the whole 
heaven, given to the people of the saints of the Most High 
God. The state and the church are thus lost in one great 
brotherhood, intelligent in Christ their Sovereign, Savior, God. 

There are few, if any portions of our population on whom, 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

the principles of civil and religious liberty have stronger 
claims, than upon the citizens of this Commonwealth. Here 
their price was most dearly paid ; their virtue most rigidly 
tested. Here came the Hugunots of France, and the Exiles of 
Switzerland suffering for Christ. Here came the Pilgrims 
resting from their toils; the Puritans, firm in the faith and 
hope of God. 

Here was raised the voice of the eloquent and revered 
Witherspoon pleading the principles of civil and religious free- 
dom. Here our Caldwell fell, their stern and able advocate. 
Through these streets our fathers were driven, by foreign vio- 
lence. Every rod of earth around us is enriched by their 
blood. On every hill bleach the bones of holy men that 
contended for our liberty and religion. Here are the battle 
fields of that conflict of opinions and of arms for the liberty and 
leligion of mankind. 

And here, too, were started and matured some of the noblest 
institutions of Christian benevolence. The names of Burr, of 
Brainard, Edwards, McWhorter, Boudinott, Finly and Griffin, 
hallow the spot where we live. Theirs were the principles of 
the gospel, of the reformation, of missions, of Christian liberty 
for the entire world. These principles have come down to 
you from great and holy men. Their sanction was their 
piety ; their purchase was their blood. They are now in your 
hands. There may they never be undervalued, impaired or 
obscured. Reaping their rich immunities, transmit them to 
your posterity and mankind that shall come after you. 

A. D. E. 
Feb., 1843. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 



§ 1. CIVIL GOVERNMENT OR THE SOCIAL CONSTITUTION: 
ITS ORIGIN, CLAIMS, AND CHIEF SECURITIES. 

The captious Pharisee, attempting to make the claims 
of the Savior conflict with the government of the Roman, 
asked, " Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not ??' The 
Redeemer, the symbol of Rom in supremacy before him, 
with inimitable wisdom replied, " Render unto C&sar the 
things that are Ccesar's, and unto God the things that are 
God's." Here was recognised the existence of human 
government, with the obligation of its subjects to honor 
and sustain it ; and in no part of the Gospel is there any 
release from the imperative demands which the laws and 
institutes of human authority impose, when not in colli- 
sion with the government and laws of God. Christianity 
prepares men for the kingdom of heaven, by making 
them good citizens of the earthly state : and no man is 
fitted for the one, who has not well discharged the duties 
of the other. 

Government, as a science, may be denominated, " the 
frame work of the social polity." In popular language it 
sometimes signifies, " the carrying of the national affairs 
2 



14 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

into execution. Sometimes the person or persons upon 
whom this duty devolves." In more general and com- 
prehensive terms, it is the " Constitution of £o;iety"* 
And it is in this wide sense that it is so interesting to 
every member of society ; as each one becomes a consti- 
tuent part, looking up for its protection and immunities, 
and is compelled to share in the responsibilities of its 
support. 

Government, or the " social constitution," has appeared 
under various forms, and never yet assumed a perma- 
nent and fixed character. Its most general features 
have been embraced in three comprehensive forms : the 
Democratical Republican, the Aristocratical Monarchy, 
and an Absolute Despotism. Dismissing the last two, 
with the various combinations which they may have as- 
sumed from time Jo time, the consideration of the first 
becomes a subject of personal interest to every American 
citizen. f This appears to be that form, to which all 
governments in their ceaseless changes are advancing ; 
which the popular mind everywhere demands, and 
which, if we mistake not, the word and providence of 

* Government, says the Hon. John Quincy Adams, is the exercise 
of power directing or controlling the will of human beings. This 
power may be exercised by every individual over himself, or it may 
be exercised by one or more individual over others. Sec Lecture 
at Providence, Nov., 1842, p. 11. 

t It is impossible to give any one definite term that shall express 
the true nature of our government. Each State has its own consti- 
tution, and all united form the Confederacy, under a separate consti- 
tution. Neither of these, nor the two combined, says Mr. Adams, 
can, without a gross and fraudulent perversion of language be termed 
a Democracy. They are neither democracy, aristocracy nor monar- 
chy. They form together a mixed government, compounded of these 
three elements, with a fourth added element, of Confederacy. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 15 

God for near six thousand years, authorise us to believe, 
that. He, in mercy, destines all mankind yet to sustain 
and enjoy. 

Under this form, says the eloquent and accomplished 
Montesquieu, " Public virtue, pervading the hearts and 
conduct of the whole body of the people, is the animating 
and sustaining principle. Every selfish and exclusive 
purpose must be relinquished by the individual : and his 
country, its glory and its happiness must take entire pos- 
session of his breast. Froud distinction for popular 
government, and happy the people among whom it is 
established if the principle were a sure consequence of 
the form." 

It is our duty and privilege, as Christian citizens, to 
see that principle secured. Having that "form" of gov- 
ernment, we trust that it is God's purpose to secure for 
us and to those who may come after us this principle as 
the legitimate fruit of the form when properly under- 
stood and rightly administered. 

We say the word and providence of God seem to favor 
this idea of government. A review of that government, 
which he early established over the Hebrews, and the 
details of which were so admirably carried out in the 
administration of the lawgiver of Israel, confirm us in 
the belief of this position. 

Reverting to these times and these first principles, we 
not only find government to be a divine institution ; " the 
powers that be, ordained of God;" but we find clearly 
marked the relations, privileges and duties of the various 
classes of society, the separate elements of which it is 
composed : that while man, must have government and 
be governed, his duty and his destiny are, wisely, virtu- 
ously, and religiously to govern himself: — by the union 



16 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

of cultivated mind, virtuous hearts and purposes of manly 
strength, he is to meet and control all the opposing in- 
terests of ignorance and wickedness. Under the salu- 
tary direction of providential and gracious influences, men 
are to take care of themselves, in associated strength, 
wisdom and virtue ; "as members one of another 1 ' to 
silence, subdue or throw out of their communion all 
who refuse submission to the constitution and govern- 
ment that enlightened counsels and religious virtue have 
reared. 

There is nothing in the original and exalted position 
which God himself held over the government of the He- 
Drews which forbids this conclusion. He did indeed de- 
liver from Sinai prominent and general laws for the gov- 
ernment of a moral and religious community. But these 
rery laws are to be considered as having their foundation 
in the immutable principles of mnral reniiiiirLp^ _a.<; ulti- 
mate and existing facts in the intellectual and moral 
kingdom of God. These laws make no new principles, 
nor do their penalties do anything more than enforce 
principles already established. These laws are but say- 
ing to the world what is right and necessary among mo- 
ral agents, and they foreshadow in their penalties what 
will be the necessary and inevitable results of disre- 
garding these rights. And if God had never descended 
on that rocky mount, and its thunders and fires never 
there been known, these fixed, moral principles, with 
their results, would all have been met in the progress of 
our race. 

These laws were subsequently drawn out and more 
fully applied in detail to the various relations of social 
and civil life. And though from their origin and incipient 
administration, we must recognise and admit a Theoc- 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 17 

racy, that God was in fact the monarch of his people ; 
yet the government which he gave to Israel, was not 
without those usual forms which are found existing in 
the civil institutions of men. God it is true was the king, 
and the high priest of the sanctuary borrowed from above 
the prerogatives of his office. At the same time the po- 
litical arrangements of the Hebrew state were under the 
direction of elders, princes and subordinate officers. To 
these, in behalf of the people, and through them to all the 
people, Mose"s delivered the divine commandments, and 
receiving through them the wishes of the people, submit- 
ted their requests to the decision of God. All this may 
at first view, if not in reality, assume the appearance of 
an aristocratical monarchy : — but beyond all this, or per- 
haps advancing upon this, we find the " tribes of Israel 
in popular assemblies," clothed with that paramount influ- 
ence which " demanded the laws to be submitted to them 
for their approval and ratification." They even assumed 
and were not denied, "the right of proposing their own 
laws, and at times to resist such as were already enact- 
ed." "There was in the Hebrew commonwealth no 
power of levying taxes but such as the people themselves 
imposed." Here was shadowed forth that more spiritual 
government of the gospel, where the sovereignty of God 
never suspends nor infringes the freedom of men. 

No one can rise from the study of the Jewish economy 
without perceiving and admiring this leading feature, the 
obvious design of God, to enlighten, elevate and empower 
his people with the privileges and blessings of self-con- 
trol, and of self-control on the principles of the divine 
government. 

An able writer has said, " Considering the age of the 
world in which the Jewish code was established and 
2* 



18 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

how little the doctrine of personal rights was understood 
in the world generally, is it not somewhat remarkable, that 
the laws of Moses were so decidedly the friend of civil 
liberty? I know not where to look for any single work 
which is so full of the great principles of political wis- 
dom, as the laws of Moses and the history of the kings of 
Judah and Israel. Notwithstanding their recent servi- 
tude to a foreign and despotic prince, and though just 
entering upon a tedious pilgrimage in the deserts of Ara- 
bia, they adopted a regular form of government. It was 
a government which lasted almost half a century before 
they came to the promised land, and which, when they 
ultimately settled in that land, remained for a series of 
years undisturbed, and enabled them to maintain their 
independence throughout all the varieties of their national 
history. And yet, with the exception of the writ of Habeas 
Corpus, a privilege not required under their government 
because it did not allow of imprisonment, I do not know 
that there is a single feature of a Free State but is here 
distinctly developed. They were a people remarkably 
well acquainted with their rights and form of government. 
Though rich in resources and powerful in arms, they 
were few. Though holding as they did, in the time of 
David and Solomon, the balance of power between the 
two great monarchies of Egypt and Assyria, and giving 
law to all the kingdoms between the Euphrates and the 
Mediterranean, xhey remained a free people. They 
were free in choosbg their own form of government; 
free in the enacting of their laws ; free in that the laws 
governed and not men." 

« The form of government established by Moses was re- 
publican; though, with salutary restrictions, the people 
were at liberty to change it when they desired. It con- 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, 19 

sisted of twelve great tribes, each under its leader con- 
stituting a little commonwealth, while all were united in 
one great republic. They were a nation of confederate 
states, bound together for the purposes of defense and 
conquest. * * * Their laws though originating for the 
most part with God, were approved by themselves. The 
nation, in other words, adopted their own laws. Nor is 
there an instance on record, to the best of my know- 
ledge, in which their laws were not proposed to the re- 
presentatives of the people and received their unanimous 
consent," 

" No nobler people ; no better organised community ever 
existed than the ancient Hebrews. Inured to honorable 
industry ; — wealthy, but without ostentatious magnifi- 
cence — ready at a moment's call to resist any attack 
upon their country's freedom — with an honest pride exult- 
ing in their revered ancestry — they may well be regarded 
during the more auspicious period of their history, as the 
noblest specimen of a free and independent nation."* 

With these views and obvious features of the govern- 
ment of Israel, perfectly harmonise the spirit, aims and 
institutes of the gospel. It everywhere goes upon the 
ground of an equality of rights, of mutual and reciprocal 
obligation. It brings all men upon one common level as 
to character and wants, and it destines them all to a com- 
mon judgment, where the " incidental, circumstantial and 
temporary distinctions of men," shall be lost in the com- 
manding retributions of a common eternity. " Where the 
spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty ;" and just in propor- 
tion as the evangelical spirit of the gospel has arisen, 
pervaded and governed society, have the uncomfortable 
restraints and adventitious distinctions of life and of gov- 

* Br. Spring. 



20 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

ernment been laid aside, and the arm of arbitrary and 
oppressive authority weakened or withdrawn. 

The gospel in its spirit and precepts comes to mode- 
rate human passion ; to subdue selfishness and pride ; to 
diffuse charity, the social affections and good-will among 
mankind. It comes to enrich the poor, to strengthen the 
feeble, to comfort the afflicted, to relieve the oppressed, 
to let the captive go free. It would impart all the ele- 
ments of the best regulated self-government ; forming 
that constitution where men may say we are ' free in- 
deed.' Here it would equalise all mankind in the hopes 
and sympathies of Christ ; raise the entire family of our 
race to the citizenship of heaven ; making freemen of the 
heirs of a corrupted bondage ; kings and priests of the 
Most High from the willing captives of sin and death. 
In Christ Jesus, there is neither Greek, nor Jew, Bar- 
barian, Scythian, bond nor free. 

" The religion," says Tocqueville, " which declares 
all men equal in the sight of God, will not refuse to 
acknowledge that all citizens are equal in the eye of 
the law." "This same religion," ho adds, "is the com- 
panion of liberty in all its battles and in all its con- 
flicts ; the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source 
of its claims." 

What the laws, institutes and religion of the Bible and 
the spirit of Christianity would have men to be, govern- 
ment, ordained of God, wisely administered and sustained 
by the people, kindly and of necessity comes in to make 
them : and it is only by sustaining and administering the 
one, in the spirit and on the principles of the other, that 
this result can be secured. Christian citizens only, can 
create and sustain a Christian government, and govern- 
ment administered on any principles but those of the 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN". 21 

Bible, will not long be a government over free and inde- 
pendent men. 

The great difficulty and danger imminent to this coun- 
try, is the hope and the struggle to attain that, by govern- 
ment and law alone, which can be secured and enjoyed 
by that only which lies back of government and law, 
enlightened, virtuous Christian principle — that which 
gives to government its ornament and pride ; to law its 
supremacy and worth. It is the casting off of these high 
principles, resisting their attractive power, that throws us 
in wild circuity from the sympathy, the light and radiant 
glory of the great, conservative system of truth and God, 
and like a baleful star stricken from its orbit, left to fall 
in loneliness and night. 

It becomes then the duty of every citizen of the state, 

and every member of the government, to see his part per- 
form^ >>,*£, fvnof mot -»*>■"' TMo plodgoo « U o. ~ »*. ~ a _.. ilio 

principles and in the spirit of a common and divine 
Christianity. Here we meet together as members of the 
civil community, under equal laws and equal moral obli- 
gations ; and the Christian preacher, as one of the mem- 
bers of the civil community, and as one of the expound- 
ers of the divine law and the principles of moral respon- 
sibility, is to aid by his ministrations of truth and mercy, 
the stability of the government and the salutary execu- 
tion of its laws. He transcends not the sphere, nor does 
he come down from the elevation and sanctity of his 
office, when he calls upon every man in the name and in 
the language of his Master to render unto Caesar the 
things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are 
God's ; whether as a citizen or a ruler of state, to govern 
and be governed as a Christian member of the common- 
wealth. There is but one law of moral rectitude, and 



22 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

that law stretches its imperious claims from the pauper 
on his bed of straw to the chair of state, the majesty of 
crowns and the throne of God ; and that man is a traitor 
to his race and a rebel against God who refuses its bind- 
ing power. 

The origin and design of government should lead men 
to reverence its character ; respect its institutes, and 
industriously seek the benefits it would confer. Its im- 
perfections are not to be attributed to its origin ; but they 
arise from the imperfect societies of men. Government 
becomes more and more perfect in its laws and happy 
in its administration as its subjects, growing in wisdom 
and virtue, labor for the general prosperity rather than 
for personal and party distinctions. 

Though the rulers of the Christian citizen, rise under 
his own choice, and the laws they enact are made his 

them, and the sanctions that clothe them, are to be 
respected as the " powers that are ordained of God ;" so 
that he can never revile nor resist their execution with 
rudeness or irreverence. 

The absorbing influence of personal or party ends, 
which overlooks alike the source, the security and pur- 
poses of government, must be carefully guarded. There 
may sometimes be party discussions and arrangements, 
which with due moderation may have their uses in sup- 
pressing local jealousies and sectional designs, as well as 
by imposing a vigilant inspection and salutary check to 
the abuse of executive powers : But undisciplined party 
will hazard the general good in its struggles for predomi- 
nance, and when attained, recklessly bind every interest 
to the increase of its own spoils. 

And there is often equal danger in servile adherence 



THE CHRISTIAN CiTlZEN. 23 

to the measures of a party administration, as in unreason- 
able opposition and violence to its character and enact- 
ments. No one can innocently or safely enlist under the 
exclusive banners of party at all, whether in power or 
contending for its attainment, considered as a party. In 
these struggles, the government of the state will become 
secondary to the triumphs of personal and party ambi- 
tion, and the precious interests of a whole community 
lost in the madness of faction. Thus blind attachment 
or indiscriminate resistance to party, impairs the vigor of 
government, degrades this heavenly ordinance and resists 
the power of God. " The great point of a Christian peo- 
ple," says Andrew Fuller, "should be an attachment to 
government as government, irrespective of the party that 
administers it." When Nero ruled and Christians bled, 
even then, loyalty was enjoined, and the despisers of 
government were rebuked and silenced as the opposers 
of God and a divine Christianity. 

With these views of the civil relations and that ordi- 
nance which defines the obligations of the citizen to the 
state, may be seen the folly and guilt of prostituting the 
administration of law and government to any selfish or 
merely temporary purposes. Too often is government 
praised and honored in its constituted authorities, not as 
it cultivates and encourages virtue and holiness, but as it 
keeps open and fruitful the sources of pecuniary gain, and 
invests the selfish and aspiring with the immunities of 
subordinate office ; while the loudest cries of remon- 
strance that come up from the thousand habitations of 
men, arise from their embarrassment and losses. 

Amid calamities so often experienced, a Christian peo- 
ple should recognise the hand of God rebuking them, 
perhaps for the perversion of government and the abuse 



24 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

of its laws. When tliese are wrongly applied, the very 
ends to winch they were made subordinate are lost, and 
a twofold defeat ensues. Human sagacity often searches 
in vain, on all ordinary principles, for the cause of na- 
tional calamities. There exist no foreign invasion ; no 
suspension of worldly resources ; there is no pestilence, 
nor sterility ; the heavens are propitious and the generous 
earth yields her increase, and the commerce of the world 
is open and free. At such times we search for causes of 
embarrassment in vain, till we refer to the perversion of 
the social and civil relations, to the forgetfulness of that 
intelligence, virtue and religion, which they were ordained 
of God to cultivate and maintain. 

In addition to this rigid regard for the proper ends of 
government, it must be remembered, that though ordained 
of God, its vast and complicated interests are safe only 
when in the hands of the intelligent and virtuous, to 
whom are the promises of the divine favor : and this it 
is made the duty of Christian citizens to implore upon the 
rulers of the nation. Subordination, respect, obedience, 
support, yea, reverence for law, and prayer for all in 
authority, are duties which every Christian citizen owes 
to the government that protects him. Be subject to 
powers, for the powers that be are ordained of God. 
Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the 
ordinance of God, and they that resist shall receive unto 
themselves condemnation. Render, therefore, to all their 
dues ; tribute to whom tribute ; custom to whom custom ; 
honor to whom honor. I exhort yon, saith the apostle, 
first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions and 
the giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings 
and for all that are in authority, that they may lead a 
quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty ; 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 25 

for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our 
Savior. 

It must be remembered, that in governments such as 
we are considering, the highest securities do not emanate 
from office and authority, from the chair of state and the 
capitol of the country ; but they rise from the hearts and 
rest in the hands of the people. Safety is found only in 
the wisdom, integrity and religion of the community. 
Here is the source of power, whence arises the investi- 
ture of office. Here are found the bulwarks of defense, 
as the munition of rocks. 

That people who respect authority, render obedience 
to law and government, and pray for the divine blessing, 
possess the substantial elements of a free and happy state. 
With them rests the favor of God. Government, legis- 
lation and the execution of law are easy and salutary. 
On the other hand, without this spirit and these virtues, 
there is no promise of protection, and no safety. The 
very laws and government of God are but anarchy and 
wild confusion amid the rebellious and maddened mul- 
titudes of men, and the authority of God is then secured 
only by the desolating scourges of his vengeance. 

In view of the value and great ends of government, it 
becomes the imperious duty of Christian ciiizens, by 
cultivating the principles essential to its maintenance, to 
give it their most efficient support ; and with vigilance 
becoming their responsibilities, and the interests involved, 
to guard against every evil which threatens its pros- 
perity. 

It is here that history opens its pages of fearful admo- 
nition. The annals of all ancient and crowded com- 
munities are dark and melancholy. They rose, flourish- 



26 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

ed, and discarding the virtues of civil life and of reli- 
gion, died under the judgments of God. We search in 
vain for their palaces and thrones. Nations that gov- 
erned the world are known only in the annals of their 
disgrace and destruction : and we walk over the ashes 
of crowded capitals, awed by the justice and the judg- 
ments that swept them from the earth. The people 
and the church of God ; free, enlightened, enriched and 
powerful Israel, casting aside the restraints of virtue and 
law, are scattered, desolate and lost amid the thousand 
nations of the earth. 

Another chapter is opened, and a new economy of 
government arises. The experience of the past is in 
vain, anl unheeded are its solemn admonitions. Cities, 
countries and nations throw off the fear of God ; violently 
war with virtue and religion, binding the souls and 
bodies of the saints, and bowing the entire Christian 
world to the iron arm of the " man of sin." We look for 
the judgments of God in vindication of truth and the 
relief of his people. But a new course of providence 
begins. A continent, unknown for ages, opens its stain- 
less bosom to the persecuted and exiled families of 
Christ. 

A new government is here founded by the most intelli- 
gent and pious men ; selected from the very church of 
God, for a purpose, we believe, of restoring and advan- 
cing religion and civil liberty ; as were the Jews for the 
illustration of the wisdom and power of God in their an- 
cient and divinely ordered government. These illus- 
trious men came not alone for civil liberty, but confes- 
sedly to advance religion ; and in the spirit and culture of 
the one to secure to the world the blessings of the other. 
A free church, a spiritual religion, the rights of con- 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 27 

science, the grace and the glory of God, were their 
primary object* ; civil liberty subordinate and conse- 
quent. They petitioned neither God nor their king for 
the one, till they had secured, enjoyed and established 
the other on a firm foundation. With all this they were 
prepared for the other, demanded and secured it. 

Thus became erected the government which we now 
enjoy. So far from being dissociated from religion, 
because it incorporated none into the civil framework of 
the state as to its legalized, ecclesiastical organization, 
it, from the beginning, adopted the laws of God as its 
statutes, and the gospel as its common law. No govern- 
ment since the theocracy of Israel, was so distinctly and 
emphatically founded on tbe principles of the Bible and 
for the great ends of a spiritual religion. Christianity 
was its basis, and it was instinct with its spirit. Instead 
of knowing no religion, it knew nothing but religion as 
its primary object of pursuit, and its bond of union. Thus 
founded, through all its branches, -egislative, military, 
judicial and executive, moral obligation and Christian 
principle were feit and acknowledged. Its vows of alle- 
giance, oaths of office, and pledges of trust, were all 
given and received on the Word of God. As clearly as 
the government of Israel was founded a religious govern- 
ment, so evidently was this established on the principles 
of Christianity ; and the purposes of each, with equal 
plainness defined. And as the safety of Israel was in the 
shelter of God's protection, so we are secure only from 
the spirit and energ7of a divine Christianity. As clearly 
as all this entered into the original structure of our gov- 
ernment, as the animating and pervading spirit of its 
institutions, it ever has and will continue to have, op- 



28 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

posing principles with which to conflict, and before 
which, it may often for a season appear to yield. Yet 
God has never deserted us. From the elastic power 
of this vital Christianity we may recover and rise above 
the deep waters that come over us. 

The original materials of the American society, and 
the various elements combining in this concentrated gov- 
ernment, have given rise to occasional difficulties and to 
no little anxiety as to the final results. There was a 
diversity of character in the two great divisions of the 
country, both as to their religious principles and the chief 
causes which led to their settlement. There are the claim- 
ed and questioned rights of separate and sovereign states, 
leading to almost unceasing " conflicts of the law ;" the 
diversity of population, slave and free ; the almost neces- 
sary rise of party and sectional jealousies, with conflict- 
ing pecuniary interests ; and from the ceaseless workings 
of the elements of such a complicated, anomalous and 
growing confederacy, departures may often occur, from 
that decorum, integrity and religious principle which 
ennobled and guided its founders. 

The ecclesiastical intolerance and civil oppression from 
which many of them fled, and the leading design by 
which the great body of them were governed, long pre- 
served in vigorous action their religious principles, and 
every day strengthened their attachment to the political 
and ecclesiastical institutes of their adoption. 

Through the whole period of the continental Congress, 
the perils and storms of that memorable day, there were 
repeated recognitions of God and a wise reference to his 
providence. Days of fasting and prayer for the aversion, 
of evils, and for the divine favor, were frequent, and 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 29 

every department of government seemed cheerfully to 
recognize the claims of a common Christianity.* 

The administration of Washington was marked through- 
out by a rigid regard for leligious principle, and this 
great man everywhere commended virtue and religion, 
not only as the sure basis of a free government, but as 
essential elements in the character of a patriot and 
statesman. " While we are zealously performing the 
duties of citizens and soldiers," says he, " we certainly 
ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. 
To the distinguished character of patriots, it should be 
our highest glory to add the distinguished character of 

* Sept. 11th, 1777, Congress, by special vote, ordered 20,000 
copies of the Bible to be imported from " Holland, Scotland, and 
elsewhere," into the different ports of the United States. In 1782, 
"in consequence of the difficulty of importing Bibles," recommended 
the edition of Robert Aiken, of Philadelphia. 

Mar. 14th, 1776, it was voted to observe May 17th as "a day of 
humiliation, fasting and prayer." Another was appointed six months 
afterwards, Dec. 11, 1776. Similar seasons were set apart by Con- 
gress, Mar. 7, 1778 ; Mar. 10, 1781 ; Mar. 19, 1782. In the reso- 
lution designating the last, we find these words : " That the religion 
of our divine Redeemer, with all its benign influences, may cover the 
earth as the waters cover the sea." 

Nov. 1, 1777, A day for public thanksgiving was proclaimed by 
Congress in view of the Divine favor to the armies of the country. 
Nov. 17, 1778, a similar day was appointed in view of the reduction 
of the army under Earl Cornwallis. " Congress in a body repaired 
to the Dutch Lutheran Church, Oct. 24, 1781, and rendered thanks 
to Almighty God." Dec. 13, 1781, was proclaimed as a day of 
thanksgiving throughout the United States. Another was designated 
for Nov. 28, 1782, with this emphatic declaration : " On every man 
is urged, each in his station, and by his influence, the practice of true 
and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public pros- 
perity and national happiness." 

3* 



30 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

Christians. The signal instances of his providential 
goodness demand from us, in a particular manner, the 
warmest returns of gratitude and piety to the Supreme 
Giver of all good." 

The opinions of great men are not alone sufficient to 
sustain the Christian religion ; but the opinions and 
practices of such a man as George Washington, attest- 
ing the value, yea, the absolute necessity of the religion of 
the gospel to the safety of our free institutions, claim our 
profound respect, admiration and gratitude ; and every 
effort to impair the fair fame of this great man, and to 
invalidate his claim to evangelical piety, is but an attempt 
to loosen the foundation upon which our civil interests 
are based. And we feel bound to question the right, if 
not to rebuke the efforts of infidels, to drag surreptitiously 
into their ranks the venerated father of our country. 
They have been anxious, says Dr. Cox, " to claim him 
as their own," and this they have done upon high autho- 
rity to them, and have labored hard to sustain the mise- 
rable foundation on which they rest.* But in this, says 

* Thomas Jefferson in his ' Ana,'' Feb. 1, 1800, says, Dr. Rush 
tells me that he had it from Asa Green, that when the clergy 
addressed General Washington on his departure from the govern- 
ment, it was observed in their consultation, that he had never, on 
any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the 
Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address 
as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he were a 
Christian or not. They did so. However, his author observed, the 
old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article par- 
ticularly except that, which he passed over without notice. " I 
know that Governeur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets and 
believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington 
believed no more of that system than he himself did." — Jefferson's 
Writings, vol. iv. p. 512. 

Why does Mr. Jefferson rest on such testimony when he was inti- 






THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 31 

the same distinguished author, " they have signally- 
failed, as their interests and their efforts will soon be all 
and eternally bankrupt together." 

Nothing is more clear than that Washington was a 
firm believer in Christianity, and its essential aids to the 
ends of all wise government. Prayer was no stranger 
to his camp, and the high decorum of religion adorned 
the entire character of his civil life. He was not a 
Christian in the closet alone ; not such from the fac- 
titious interest of state relations, but from principle, at 
home, abroad, everywhere a professed Christian. A 
Christian, neither sectarian nor exclusory. He met the 
followers of God at the table of Christ, with a cordiality 
of communion as fraternal and strong, as he commended 
the principles and virtues of a divine and spiritual Chris- 
tianity to the friends and fellow-citizens of his country. 
" And every fact that illustrates his piety, or in any way 
redeems his fame from this calumny (of infidel claims), 
is welcomed by the public sentiment of the country as a 
part of the common treasure of mankind."* 

mate with General Washington from 1769, and that for four years 
while he was Secretary of State, he says, " their intercourse was 
daily confidential and cordial." — Vol. II. p. 349. 

* In 1779-80, the army of General Washingten was in winter 
quarters at Morristown, N. J. The Rev. Dr. Johns was the pastor 
of the Presbyterian Church in that place. ,f The General requested 
Mr. Johns to have a longer intermission between his morning and 
afternoon services, that his officers might attend: so it was changed, 
and the officers attended both services." 

The service of the communion which was observed in that church 
but twice a year, occurred while the army were at Morristown. In a 
morning of the previous week, the General visited the house of the 
Rev. Dr. Johns, and thus accosted him : " Doctor, I understand ;hat 
the Lord's Supper is to be celebrated with you next Sunday. I 



32 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

There were, however, many adverse influences to the 
moral and religious principles upon which the govern- 
ment of this country was established and at first admin- 
istered. We have already alluded to the diverse cha- 
racter in the elements of which it was constructed. The 
demoralizing influence of the war of the Revolution 
greatly increased and aggravated this diversity and 
strengthened the enemies of religious principle, specially 
in its bearing upon the government of the state. Long and 
secret influences were at work adverse to the stern and 
evangelical piety of the puritans ; and there were many 
whose professed principles demanded the most enlarged 
liberty, and who violently opposed every appearance, real 
or imaginary, of aristocratical affinity. The restraints of 
moral and religious obligation were as unfriendly to the 
former, as the most extended and agrarian democratic 
principle in the state was dear to the latter. And while 
the demoralizing influence of the war above-mentioned 
greatly augmented the one, the state of the world abroad, 
excited and agitated by the scenes of revolutionary 

would learn if it accords with the canons of your church to admit 
communicants of another denomination"!" The Doctor rejoined, 
" most certainly ; ours is not the Presbyterian table, but the Lord's 
table ; and we hence give the Lord's invitation to all his followers, 
of whatever name." The General replied, "I am glad of it, that is 
as it ought to be : but as I was not quite sure of the fact, I thought 
I would ascertain it from yourself, as I propose to join with you on 
that occasion. Though a member of the Church of England, I have 
nonexclusive partialities." The Doctor re-assured him of a cordial 
welcome, and the General was found seated with the communicants 
the next Sabbath." — Dr. Cox's Theopneuston, pp. 28-9. 

There are living witnesses to the verity of this and other 
instances of Washington's participation with Christians at the table 
of Christ. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 33 

France, was stimulating the other almost to a state of 
phrensy. 

France was endeared to us by her kind sympathy and 
aid through the eventful crisis of our revolution, and 
the result of her own sanguinary experiment was not 
fully settled. It was loudly claimed as a signal advance 
of human society — a splendid march of intellect and 
moral achievement towards the perfectability of our 
race. 

The depressed state of morals in many sections of the 
country, and the settled opposition of multitudes to any 
restrictive forms of administration, which could be sup- 
posed to harmonize with aristocratical government in any 
of its features, were preparing the way for signal changes 
in the general aspect of society. It required but some 
concentrating influence, some commanding object of 
attraction, to unite these strong and unstable elements. 

An individual long distinguished in the councils of this 
country, who had written his name deep and endur- 
ing on the foundation-stone of our civil structure, and 
on many accounts was endeared to the whole nation, had 
become familiar with the principles of French philosophy 
both in politics and religion.' He had enjoyed the 
society and become deeply imbued with the spirit of that 
remarkable people, and he sincerely sympathised with 
them in their visionary speculations upon the advance- 
ment of society, and their full belief in the power of in- 
tellectual culture to secure the highest ends of the social 
state. Infidelity had done its work on his great mind. 

Thomas Jefferson, governed by the spirit of Euro- 
pean scepticism, and animated with the speculative phi- 
losophy of revolutionary France, and aided by the pe- 
culiar circumstances of the country at that time, found 



34 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

in his own hand the power of turning the scale in. 
favor of his elevation to the presidency of these United 
States.* 

Under such auspices, and surrounded by these circum- 
stances, he enters upon the solemn responsibilities of his 
high office ; and whatever may be said of his own per- 
sonal and direct influence, or of his political character, of 
which we have here nothing to say, the result was as 
obvious as it was melancholy. Instead of the stern 
virtues of the Puritan faith and of evangelical piety, with 
the conservative energies of a confederate Christian 
government, lending its aid to the advancement of virtue 
and religion, French morals, French infidelity, French 
philosophy, like French fashions, soon spread a new 
aspect, over the fac& of society, and from the heart sent a 
feverish and fatal action to every extremity. 

One of the peculiar and leading, if not most efficient 
influences that attended the elevation of Mr. Jefferson, 
was the "levelling system," so ruinous in France, and 
which found its way to this country at this eventful crisis 
of its history. It was not the agrarian movement of the 
Tiers Etat alone, but the very cry of the sans culotte 
of the streets of Paris. Instead of a wise and efficient 
effort to elevate every class of the community, and a 
laudable desire to advance through the influence of edu- 
cation and morality ; there was a determination in the 
inferior orders of society to rise on the ruins of the 
higher classes of the community. A demand was made 
for the most enlarged liberty, and the vulgar prejudice 

* See notice of the Life of Jefferson and the Memoirs of Aaron 
Burr, by M. L. Davis, in the New-York Review, No. I. Mar. 1837, p. 
5, and No. IIL Jan. 1838, p. 175. And also the Life of Burr, by- 
Davis, vol. II. pp. 71-74. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 35 

was fanned to a flame. Low, ignorant, and scurrilous 
infidelity had its jubilee : its high priest was the chief of 
the nation ; and his voluminous writings, as well as his 
life, show how faithfully he served the altar at which he 
ministered. 

His works have already been commended to the 
young men of our country, and as the guardian of their 
morality every Christian citizen must desire to furnish 
along with them an antidote to their poison. And while 
many claim the right to question the political sagacity of 
this distinguished man, we shall ever regret his influence 
on the morals of this nation, and feel it our duty to speak 
in decided disapprobation of his religious principles. 

During the period of his administration and for some 
years following it, the principles which he embraced 
exerted a most disastrous influence on the popular mind. 
Infidelity, both in its refinement and in its grossness, 
from the schools of Rochester, Rosseau, and Shaftes- 
bury ; from Hobbs, Blount, Voltaire, and Tom Paine, 
went forth to poison the public mind, and to feed the 
voracious appetite of the vulgar. It was popular not 
only at the seat of government, but it was so everywhere. 
Not a retired village, remote among the mountains of 
New England, but had its youthful society organised to 
discuss its principles and favor its claims ; while every 
institution of learning found its seed thickly sown and 
springing with a vigorous growth. 

When the head and the heart are both alike diseased, 
the whole body, to its remotest members, cannot resist 
the fatal contagion. Jefferson was the head, the heart, 
the idol of a numerous and powerful class of avowed 
sceptics. Disease spread through almost every member. 
It blindly worshipped and had its reward. 



36 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

While the influence of the war of the Revolution pre- 
pared, in a measure, the way for this disastrous reign of 
infidelity, no one can question, that the burden of respon- 
sibility for its continuance and spread rests in a great 
measure on Mr. Jefferson. Of this he was proud. His 
own table and the Sabbath became the theatre and the 
occasion on which " Christianity was made the subject 
of his conversation and his sneers," and the young men 
of his favorite university were the victims of his majestic, 
ex cathedra invectives against the religion of the gospel.* 

He sought to lay the foundations of infidelity deep and 
durable by the broad projection of this literary institution, 
and in all his writings, down to one of the latest epistles 
that he dictated, as well as in his rejection of the conso- 
lations of religion on his death-bed,f his sentiments were 

* See Trumbull's Reminiscences of Washington. 

t The letter of Mr. Jefferson to John Adams near the close of his 
life ; also Tucker's Life and Character of Jefferson, vol. II. p. 495. la 
his correspondence he expressly denies the claims of Christ and the 
inspiration of the Gospel. His remarks respecting Jesus Christ and 
the wife of Joseph are too indelicate and blasphemous to be repeated. 
He charges the apostles with "stupidity and roguery,'' and says, "of 
this band of dupes and impostors Paul was the great Coryphceus." 

In a letter to William Short, speaking of his university, he says : 
" The serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects, to 
whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous. Hos- 
tile as these sects are, in every other point to one another, they 
unite in maintaining their mystical theogony against those who 
believe there is only one God. The Presbyterian clergy are loudest ; 
the most intolerant of all sects ; the most tyrannical and ambitious. 
They pant to re-establish by law that holy inquisition which they can 
now only infuse into public opinion. We have most unwisely com- 
mitted to the hierophants of our particular superstition the direction 
of public opinion, that lord of the universe. We have given them 
stated and privileged days to collect and catechise us, opportunities 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 37 

avowed and determined. Of the morality, political or 
private, consequent on such sentiments, the history of 
his life must decide. 

When Dr. D wight entered on the presidency of Yale 
College, that institution was entirely overrun with infi- 
delity, and the most able productions of his great mind 
are found in his invaluable discourses on modern scep- 
ticism. 

A reaction in the public mind soon took place, and 
under the fostering care of our literary and religious 
institutions better principles began to regain the ascen- 
dency. Men almost universally saw that something bet- 
ter than infidelity was needed to "improve the reason 
and enlighten the general mind ;" that without moral and 
religious principle there was no security for the rising 
generation, and no permanent stability to government or 
law. As France had sunk into the iron arms of a des- 
potism, more cruel than that from which she revolted, 
and become the executioner of her own best sons, her 
friends and admirers here, warned by her sad catastro- 
phy, no longer to idolise reason in the rejection of Christ, 
began to reverence the principles of the gospel as the 
only sure charter of republican liberty. The man, who 
" in his high and palmy slate," was the idol of millions, 
had passed away, and "like all retiring statesmen," when 
losing their power of patronage, " experienced the deser- 
tion" of multitudes who once lived upon his smiles and 



of delivering their oracles to the people in mass, and of moulding 
their minds as wax in the hollow of their hands. But in spite of 
their Eliminations against endeavors to enlighten the general mind, 
to improve the reason of the people and encourage them in the use 
of it, the liberality of (Virginia) this state will support this institution 
and give fair play to the cultivation of reason." 

4 



88 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

were loud in his praise. Here he found the truth of his 
own " favorite dogma/' " that though popular opinion 
may at first frequently be wrong, yet men will at last 
reach a correct conclusion." This became realised in 
his own case, and we no longer wonder that, in the lan- 
guage of his own eulogist biographer, " it was the fate 
of Thomas Jefferson to be at once more loved and 
praised by his friends, and more hated and reviled by 
his adversaries, than any of his compatriots ;" and what- 
ever admiration may be given to his political sagacity, 
no respect is due or can be paid to his moral and reli- 
gious principles. Having tasted their bitter fruits, multi- 
tudes became ready to espouse the cause of a long 
neglected and vilified Christianity. As by common con- 
sent other minds and "other principles ultimately became 
ascendant, and the more valuable, moral interests of the 
country began to advance, while virtue and religion lent 
their aid to the order and stability of the state. An 
interesting chapter is here opened in the literary and 
religious history of this country. 

Passing over a few years we come to the war of 1812. 
This scourge always brings a train of moral evils and 
throws up new elements of society, which under no 
other circumstances would ever rise. In its desolating 
influence on the institutions of religion, it paves the way 
for scepticism and vulgar infidelity, as well as for the 
habits of gross licentiousness. 

The immediate terrors of this period passed away, but 
its demoralising influence continued. The Sabbath was 
prostrated ; moral and religious obligation was weakened, 
and Christianity had but few advocates in high places. 
We do not recollect, that, during eight years of one con- 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 39 

tinuous administration, there was any express recognition 
of a divine religion from the executive department, and 
but feeble illustrations of its virtue anywhere at the capi- 
tal. The plea of state necessity and the advantage of 
rapid intelligence to the community, legalised the dese- 
cration of the Christian Sabbath, and its legitimate result 
was the general prevalence of a lax morality. 

Though there was a season of resting from political 
animosities, after the battles of this war were fought ; 
there was, at the same time, too much countenance every- 
where given to the loose and infidel habits of men. The 
agrarian spirit began again its work, and seeking to throw 
off the supremacy of intellect, demanded freedom from 
the restraints of law and moral obligation. And what- 
ever we may think of the times that succeeded, their mo- 
ral results cannot be overlooked ; and we are bound to 
refer them to the right source. We have not a doubt, 
that the besc intentions governed the distinguished Chief 
Magistrate, and we impute to him none of the principles 
of an infidel philosophy. We looked with lively hope 
for the results of his elevation, and anticipated much 
popular reformation ; though our fears had not wholly 
subsided in view of his previous history. We remem- 
bered the resolute spirit and the moral daring of the sol- 
dier ; the vast responsibilities he assumed and the sum- 
mary justice that he executed. As to the right of such 
assumption, and the necessities that demanded it, we 
have nothing to say. However, the great body of the 
people may now coincide with the judgment then exer- 
cised, it was an experiment which the genius of our 
government will sanction, but at great peril ; and though, 
in a solitary instance, the result may be salutary, the 
principle at once invalidates our chief security, the sacred 



40 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

majesty of law. This is rather a question of casuistry 
than of constitutional or statute law, and as such, forming 
the first and only precedent of the kind in this country* 
should be seriously considered. For if, " inter arma, 
silent leges," then our constitution and laws must yield to 
the sword, and even the writ of Habeas Corpus be left at 
the disposal of adventitious military power, which the 
constitution has not trusted to the hands even of the- 
Chief Magistrate himself, nor has it clothed the legis- 
lative and executive powers combined, with the autho- 
rity, to proclaim martial law over private citizens, by 
which they may become subjected to councils of war. — 
(See Con.,fflh and sixth amendments.) 

How far these acts of military power and of personal 
responsibility, may have encouraged the general spirit of 
insubordination that soon ensued, it is impossible to 
decide. From a variety of concurring causes, all tending 
to the same end, it required but a solitary commanding 
example, to settle the opinions and conduct of thousands. 
Events long maturing were approaching a crisis. The 
clashings of party and the indomitable spirit of men were 
impatient of control, and an easier morality was every- 
where demanded. Sources of intelligence, and means of 
moral culture were insufficient, to check the popular 
licentiousness, and providential scourges were in vain. 
Pestilence swept like the winds through almost every 
dwelling, and universal embarrassment succeeded. The 
demand for a general fast in view of the public calamity, 
was answered in the language of Jefferson, "this country 
knows no religion." At this time, the growth of popular 
and vulgar infidelity became rapid and almost universal. 
Our cities were full of it, and its halls were crowded 
with the flower of our youth. Its victims, its preachers, 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 41 

men and women, domestic and foreign, were every where, 
and its principles and purposes assumed every variety of 
shape. It came in the name of liberty, of rational reli- 
gion, of humanity. In meliorating the condition of soci- 
ety it would reduce its criminal law, by banishing its 
penalties, demanding the life of no man, the murderer not 
excepted. 

.As the natural result of these things, multitudes, cast* 
ing off moral responsibility, and setting aside all forms 
of law, entered upon the administration of justice in 
their own way. The ruffian in the street, the duellist, 
the enraged legislator, and crowds of excited and reck- 
less men, catching the same spirit, carried forward the 
fearful work, till law and justice were but a name, and 
powerless before the storm. To this very hour, the mur- 
derer stands unrebuked in the halls of legislation, boldly 
avowing his adherence to his shameless " code of honor," 
in open contempt of the laws of God and his country, 
perjured by the violation of his own oath. Violent and 
visionary men, contemning the whole system of law, and 
encouraged by the vapid speculations of transcendental 
philosophisings, would overturn our entire social system. 

The striking parallel of these times with those of 
Mr. Jefferson's administration, the historian has yet to 
write — and with a discerning hand to equalize the re. 
sponsibility involved. In this respect, great injustice 
may have already been done to individuals, and severe 
censure fallen, not upon the most guilty. No single man 
can either cause or cure the multiplied evils that have 
been inflicted upon us. The disastrous influences of war, 
a general, corrupt public sentiment, and the violence of 
party, in the two instances before us, were more powerful 
than the principles and patronage of any one man, what= 
4* 



42 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

ever those principles and patronage may have been. 
And we must remember, that it is public sentiment that 
makes men ; rather than men, singly or politically asso- 
ciated, that form the public sentiment, and that, as citi- 
zens, we must share in all the responsibilities of public 
station. 

We always love to speak well of our country. We 
highly prize its institutions ; and we regret that the 
foreign traveller will take no more pains to go into the 
secrets and the charms of our society, and not judge of us 
alone from those light elements that float upon its surface. 
And we regret still more, that the stern virtues and in- 
tegrity, the intellect and moral sense of the country, have 
so long slumbered over the violence of party zeal. The 
result has come upon us, and it cannot be endured. By 
all confessed, confidence in legislation has been impair- 
ed; the press subsidized and often scurrilous ; the Senate 
has impaired its own good name, and the Executive office 
itself become disrobed of its primitive honor and dig- 
nity. 

We believe, however, that all this is but temporary, 
and that even now, it has begun to work its own cure ; 
not so much from the want of elements upon which to act, 
as from the fact, that the people are tired of it, and that 
intelligent, moral principle, will no longer allow its ascen- 
dency. The elastic energy of Christianity still lives, and 
God, hearing the cry of his own people, restrains the 
violence of men. 

There are signs of a better day. The more respect- 
able portion of the public journals begins to wear a better 
character and breathe a milder spirit. The press demands 
an abatement of its own nuisance, and the redress of pub- 
lic grievances ; the cessation of party violence and pro- 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 43 

scription. All these favorable indications appeal to the 
Christian citizen, demanding, specially from the moral 
and religious of all parties their active co-operation. 

And in seeking the remedy of public evils, we are not 
to rely on sudden and revolutionary movements ; nor on 
any rapid succession of changes of men in office and ge- 
neral principles of government. These principles are too 
firmly fixed, or should be so, to admit of sudden change. 
The restless and radical spirit that would legislate all 
evils out of society, and multiply statute law, to reach 
every action of life, is as hopeless as it is imperious. 
Social evils do not come upon us in a day, nor can they 
be removed in a moment. Evils that may now exist, 
have been of gradual growth, and had their origin in re- 
mote and perhaps unseen causes. It is only by sub- 
stantial industry, virtuous economy, general intelligence, 
a rigid morality and a spiritual religion, that the manli- 
ness, order, stability and happiness of the American peo- 
ple can be restored and confirmed. And this, we repeat, 
is not the work of a day ; nor is there any hope of per- 
manent good, but from those religious principles, which 
lie at the basis of the social constitution as well as of 
private worth and vital piety. 

Men, even in the social state, are too much accustomed 
to charge upon others, specially their rulers, the evils 
which they suffer. The embarrassments of the commu- 
nity become so identified, and habits of political immoral- 
ity, are often so incorporated with the administration of the 
government, and that too with the consent and from the 
demands of the people, that the government itself loses 
its power to remedy the evils it may have created, and 
must wait the action of a correct public sentiment. It is 



44 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

to that sentiment, that we must look. This is what we 
all should strive to create. 

The system, of purchase and proscription on party 
grounds, as a- moral question simply, must not be permit- 
ted to become the settled policy of this government. " To 
the victors belong the spoils," must be erased from our 
records. Promotions to office and removals, on the 
grounds of party affinities, are alike injurious to those who 
bestow and those who receive the preferment. 

Thomas Jefferson, with whom this system may be said 
to have had its origin in this country, saw the necessity 
for an apology, even for its most cautious exercise, at his 
first installment. It was demanded, he says, that his 
administration might be harmonious and unobstructed. 
With this secured, his only inquiry as to qualifications 
for all subordinate office, should be, " Is he honest ; is 
he capable ; is he faithful to the constitution ?" But how 
easily may this inquiry be forgotten, and new qualifica- 
tions required, at the expense of moral character and the 
constitution ? 

The letter addressed to President Munroe, upon the 
subject of his cabinet ministry, from one who succeeded 
him, is remembered and admired by all. That advice 
was, to pay no respect to party relations, but to select the 
best and ablest men, irrespective of such affinities. This, 
no doubt, was the deliberate judgment of this man of 
commended " Roman virtue," and it did much towards 
his own subsequent elevation. But it was one thing, to 
say how government should be formed and administered, 
while seated at the Hermitage, and another, actually 
so to administer it, when the burden of its vast respon- 
sibilities was assumed amid the storms and waves of 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 45 

party violence, and the clamors of political aspirants, 
pressing their conflicting claims. To administer that 
governmemt now, on principles however correct and 
clearly denned in calmer moments and under other cir- 
cumstances, "hie labor, hoc opus est. 11 

It is unreasonable and cruel to raise men to office, and 
then obstruct its proper functions. We may throw in- 
surmountable obstacles in the way of the very govern- 
ment which we create, and literally shake its foundations 
by the storms of popular and party violence : and shall 
we then charge all the evil upon the single man, whom 
we have thus disabled from acting on his own prin- 
ciples, and from carrying out his own purposes ; prin- 
ciples and purposes which we may have sanctioned and 
admired. There is a species of moral rebellion and trea- 
son here, which is no slight peril to the social system. 
The mariner may lay his course direct from the quiet ha- 
ven ; with fair skies and starry nights sail safely and 
rapidly on his way : but when storms and winter snows, 
and dark tempests, " come down upon the sea ; when 
neither sun nor stars for many days appear, and all hope 
of being saved is taken away ;" then he may " undergird," 
cast his anchors or " unlaid" his burden ; but there is 
" mutiny on board," and amid this " Euroclydon," what 
can he do ? Though an " angel stand by him," the storm 
does not cease : he is wrecked on a barbarous coast. 

Amid the warring of moral elements, what can sterling 
integrity do ? It may resist, long, manfully, unimpaired: 
But the cry from out the winds of party strife is deter- 
mined, as it is profane. '* Though the administration be 
pure as an angel's, it shall be overthrown," and the iron 
despotism of party triumphs : the distinguished victim is 
sacrificed on the altar of Moloch. 



46 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

Providential changes and new popular affinities agitate 
the public mind alternately with hope and fear. The 
sublimest moral spectacle is seen. The government of 
millions entirely changed without bloodshed or even vio- 
lence. But, religious principle and God, we fear, were too 
much forgotten. The high object of admiration and hope 
falls to the dust, and a nation is rebuked. It was a salu> 
tary lesson, and like Israel of old, congregations of wor- 
shippers through the land, openly bowed in recogniiion of 
the divine chastisement. 

Again a noble principle is avowed, and the policy of 
government defined. " No man shall be removed or 
proscribed on grounds of party affinities." But the pri- 
vate citizen in view of the chair of state, and the incum- 
bent there installed, are not always one and the same. 
And in our popular government and social character, the 
reason for this fact should be seriously considered. Men 
are human, whether in private life or on the throne ; 
and under the pressure of " state necessity" or for party 
purposes, may be driven from their own principles, to 
results which other circumstances would have forbid. 

The remedy for all this, we have said, lies with the 
people, who are the source of power and the virtual ex- 
ecutives of the country. It is for them, to raise and incor- 
porate into all the departments of government, those ster- 
ling principles upon which it was founded. That false 
and fatal maxim, " this government knows no religion," 
must be rebuked by the actual presentation of its power 
in the al! pervading demonstration of its excellence. A 
government founded on Protestant Christianity ; distribu- 
ting by acts of Congress the Christian Scriptures ; hold- 
ing days of fasting and prayer ; requiring belief in the 
truth of a final and eternal retribution for the validity of 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 47 

an oath ; while every servant it employs must swear fi- 
delity on the inspired records ; Such a government u know 
no religion /" 

This government knows no particular denomination of 
Christians and encourages no distinct religious party or 
form of ecclesiastical polity. But is this knowing no re- 
ligion ? There is a common religion — a common Chris- 
tianity — an accredited Gospel of a Divine Redeemer, 
which this government from the first acknowledged and 
incoporated into its elements of common law, and in a 
thousand ways recognised the claims of its Author. The 
bare recognition of an overruling Providence is not 
enough. This infidelity will admit. We must cling to 
the Christian Scriptures and the Christian virtues. 

From admiration of these principles and from deep con- 
viction of their importance to us, we often refer to the 
spirit and example of our fathers, fresh from their suffer- 
ings and strong in Christian faith. We venerate the first 
Chief Magistrate of our country. There was a sublimi- 
ty in his character independent of his religion ; but it was 
this, that adorned most the soldier and the statesman, 
and this will be his lasting monument, when the achieve- 
ments of his political greatness shall pass away. And 
hence it was, that the living and dying testimony of his 
late successor, to the excellence and power of Christiani- 
ty, came like a divine encouragement to the hopes and 
prayers of the Christian citizen. It was as the returning 
of the long loved star, precursor of day. 

The great ends of government must ever be kept in 
view both by the people and their rulers. And when 
meeting the responsibilities and discharging the duties of 
Christian citizens, we may safely confide in the govern- 
ment which we have created, and demand from our rulers 



48 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

those securities and blessings for which government is 
ordained. 

" Government has something more to do," says Mr. 
Webster, " than to protect industry, and secure to enter- 
prise its due reward." It has, or should have a higher 
aim. We must regard the moral sentiments of the com- 
munity. " Amid all the efforts and sacrifices for the ad- 
vancement of society at the present day, I have thought," 
says this distinguished man, " that the influence of Gov- 
ernment on the morals and on the religious feelings of 
the community, is apt to be overlooked, or underrated. 
I speak, of course, of its indirect influence, of the power 
of its example, and the general tone which it inspires." 

" A popular government, in all these respects, is a most 
powerful institution ; more powerful, as it has sometimes 
appeared to me, than the influence of most other human 
institutions put together, either for good or for evil, ac- 
cording to its character. Its example, its tone, whether 
of respect or disrespect to moral obligation, is most im- 
portant to human happiness ; it is among those things 
which most affect the political morals of mankind, and 
their general morals also. I advert to this, because there 
has been put forth in modern times the false maxim that 
there is one morality for politics, and another morality 
for other things ; that in their political conduct to their 
opponents, men may say and do that, which they would 
never think of saying or doing in the personal relations 
of private life. There has been openly announced a sen- 
timent which I consider as the very concrete of false mo- 
rality, which declares that " all is fair in politics." If a 
man speaks falsely or calumniously of his neighbor, and 
is reproached for the offence, the ready excuse is this — 
' It was in relation to public and political matters ; I cher- 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 49 

ished no personal ill will whatever against that individual, 
but quite the contrary ; I spoke of my adversary merely 
as a political man.' In my opinion, the day is coming 
when falsehood will stand for falsehood, and calumny 
will be treated as a breach of the commandment, whether 
it be committed politically, or in the concerns of private 
life." 

" The feelings," he adds, " are to be disciplined ; the 
passions are to be restrained ; true and worthy motives to 
be inspired ; a profound religious feeling to be instilled 
and a pure morality inculcated under all circumstances." 

Such sentiments as these, borrowed from the gospel, 
and sustained by its spirit, the Christian citizen and 
statesman are to cherish and disseminate. Before these, 
when pervading private life, and ennobling the offices of 
state ; vulgar infidelity will retire ; scepticism refined, 
lose its charms ; public justice re-assume its prerogatives, 
and law become secure in the open execution of its 
penalties. 

I. From the foregoing considerations of the principles 
of a free government, the sacredness of constitutional law 
and the maintenance of legally administered justice as- 
sume an importance which no Christian nor casuist can 
for a moment overlook. 

The people of this country have long rested in the 
fancied securities of a government of law. To all sug- 
gested fears from abroad and predictions of danger, we 
have had one standing reply : " Ours is a government of 
law, and not of will." And so confident have we been 
in this strong guaranty, that few could at all appreciate 
the value or demand for that patriot and Christian senti- 
ment of Mr. Wirt, pledging his support to " the Constitu- 
5 



50 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

tion and Laws" Still less perhaps, did they see the ne- 
cessity for the injunction of the dying Magistrate " let 

THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTITUTION BE CARRIED OUT." 

These great men knew the value of constitutional law. 
They knew more ; the necessity of moral and religious 
principle for its support and administration : And no 
doubt their sagacious minds perceived the foreshadowings 
of evil. Their cautions were needed, and their counsels 
wise. Experience is a teacher true, and severer still. 

This government was established a government of law, 
in contradistinction to a government of will. Its found- 
ers had long endured the oppression of the one and ulti- 
mately broke from its chains. As far as human foresight 
and providence could do, they framed a constitution and 
laws for the other. They never dreamed that the sub- 
jects of its protection would demand its revulsion ; least 
of all that the hand, lifted in solemn asseveration to main- 
tain it, would ever invalidate its claims or spurn its autho- 
rity. The restrictions, limits and checks to delegated 
and executive power, by written law, appeared abundant. 

But experience has ever shown, that law, without vir- 
tue and religious principle, is vain and powerless. The 
very body that enacted it and the hand that should exe- 
cute it, may be among the first to annul and annihilate it. 

It has already become a part of history, that the will 
not only of adventitious parties, but the force of individu- 
al will has far invaded a government of law, and that mul- 
titudes every where have spurned its righteous claims. 
Long established principles of legislation have been set 
aside, and what one branch of the government has set up, 
another has subverted. The enactments of yesterday 
are annulled to-day, or rudely assailed and erased from 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 51 

the statute book. Law has been shorn of its majesty and 
the constitution, of both our civil and religious liberties 
greatly impaired. Even the decisions of the highest ju- 
dicial tribunal have been scorned and set aside. The 
most sacred treaties have been violated, at the expense 
of both common and statute law, while men every where 
assuming the responsibility of law and justice have war- 
red upon personal security and life. 

And these things too have met their crisis and a re- 
form is demanded. Regularly administered law with the 
severe and just infliction of its penalties cannot longer 
be dispensed with, and '* the principles of the constitution 
must be carried out" till, from the humblest cottage to 
the capitol, their majesty shall be respected and re- 
vered. The Clnistian citizen pledging his respect, obe- 
dience and vindication of the constitution and laws under 
which he lives, and proffering to rulers and magistrates cor- 
dial and efficient cooperation, may rightfully expect and 
demand from them a faithful discharge of their high trust. 

II. Another subject, and not wholly foreign to the 
preceding, is the faithful regard to the fulfilment of pro- 
mises. 

The violation of the public faith ; denial of justice to 
the injured and oppressed ; the disregard of treaties, and 
virtual annulling of contracts form a melancholy chapter 
in the history of this country. State necessity, not only, 
has been pleaded; but the providence of God towards 
uncivilized nations adduced in justification of that wast- 
ing process, which has driven the original proprietors of 
this land from home and life, till scarce a remnant re- 
mains. 

The influence of commanding example, it is impossible 



52 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

to trace, yet the violations of tlie public faith may every 
where be seen working disastrously. What do we now 
see through the land, but the most fearful delinquency of 
moral obligation, and alarming efforts to escape even legal 
responsibility ? Entire sovereignties are meditating the 
hazardous experiment of repudiating their pecuniary obli- 
gations ; and corporate institutions dissolving into their 
irresponsible elements, are leaving the innocent to sufTer 
and shaking all confidence in the value of securities and 
the faith of promises. It may truly be said, that this 
whole nation, in its very questionable law of bankruptcy, 
has assumed the fearlul responsibility of legalized repu- 
diation. As a question of casuistry, we must feel that 
in this act of national supremacy, a giant blow has been 
struck at the basis of commercial morality, weakening 
every where the sense of pecuniary obligation. 

The influence of these high proceedings has been fast 
working its way down to the calculations and habits of the 
more private members of society, who from such prece- 
dents, from the laws of bankruptcy, or from their embar- 
rassment and losses, feel at liberty to repudiate their indi- 
vidual debts, and set aside those claims which otherwise 
would remain sacred. 

The doctrine of repudiation in all its forms, as Chris- 
tian citizens, we must oppose. We would unite the pul- 
pit and the press, the judge and the jury, and every 
where speak in terms of the most decided condemnation. 
In the moral and religious community, if no where else, 
let the faith of promises be unimpaired. Let it be re- 
membered, that he that is unjust in the least is unjust also 
in much, and that he who repudiates his extended obliga- 
tions, cannot be trusted on the grounds of his honesty, in 
any of the more restricted operations of life. An unfore- 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 53 

seen inability to meet our engagements does not free us 
from responsibility, and no acts of compromise nor laws 
of bankruptcy can annul that moral obligation, which to a 
Christian is stronger than human law. Compromise, 
bankruptcy, repudiation pays nu debt, and where either 
exempts the debtor from the cruelty of an oppressive 
creditor, it impairs not at all his obligation to meet every 
engagement, when he shall have acquired the ability to 
do it. A Christian citizen may rightfully avail himself of 
the advantages of compromise, or of the laws of bankrupt- 
cy perhaps, but after having " provided for his own,'' that 
which their necessities demand, he must feel every debt 
he owes to be bin ling still. 

Repudiation cannot be admitted for a moment any 
where, and least of all by those communities, which as 
independent sovereignties exist, not by the supports of or- 
dinary law, but by the faith and honor of nations. How 
can such a community repudiate its debts ? Who are the 
state ? They, who live and are here to-day, are gone to- 
morrow. But the state lives, and the successors of repu- 
diating rulers live, and with their immunities, must as- 
sume the responsibilities and meet the claims of every 
creditor. We will not believe that one of these confede- 
rate sovereignties will ever seriously enter upon this ha- 
zardous experiment. 

A sacred regard to the faith of promises is no more 
essential for the support of private worth, than for the 
reputation and existence of the associated and corporate 
relations of society, where so many seem to lose their 
personal responsibility and sense of justice. Still more 
is this faith essential to the integrity and success of civil 
compacts. The first may respect but a few ; here all 
are implicated. In one case you pollute the spring that 
5* 



54 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

rises at your own door ; in the other, you poison the 
fountain at which millions drink. 

As sovereignties, repudiate our debts ? How shall 
we appear to the eyes of civilized nations ? A few years 
ago, proudly demanding the claims of our citizens and 
rushing into war with France for a farthing, and now 
indebted to half Europe hundreds of millions and refuse 
to pay ! Upon our own principles, what have we to say, 
if demands are made on us in the name of nations, and 
on the principles of international law, Europe, recog- 
nizing us in our national sovereignty, should wade the 
seas and bury us in our own blood ? The justice of our 
disgrace and doom no American could call in question. 
Rather a thousand times combine the ample resources of 
this vast country and restore every member of the con- 
federacy into the credit and confidence of the world. 
Repudiate our debts, we must not ; we cannot. Do it ; 
but it does not pay them ; nor cancel obligation, nor lia- 
bility. Nations are not bound by mercantile laws, that 
bankruptcy may evade ; but honor and moral integrity 
are the bonds of state ; and when we stand bankrupt or 
repudiate our debts we become disgraced and outlawed 
from the fraternity of nations, and the civilized world to 
whom we are indebted, may justly seize on our estate 
and confiscate our possessions, as we distrain the goods 
and chattels of the insolvent debtor and equalize his 
assets to his creditors. 

We cannot wholly dismiss this subject without a brief 
allusion to those habits which have greatly contributed 
to that embarrassment, which so severely tries the moral 
integrity of men ; and we do so on account of their direct 
bearings upon the question of morals. 

How far the long established usages of mercantile and 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 55 

commercial life may have contributed to the present con- 
dition of society is an important inquiry ; and there can 
be no doubt that a revision is here demanded. There 
must be something wrong, or such sudden and general 
revulsions could not so often occur when no providential 
causes intervene. We would not reject the system of 
credit, yet all allow that it has been greatly abused. 
And those who have sought most extensively its advan- 
tages, have shared most largely in pecuniary embarrass- 
ments. While the men that relied at first on their own 
limited resources, and persevered modestly, satisfied 
with moderate profits, are now the men of responsibility 
and wealth, resting in the valuable reflection that they 
have been the makers of their own fortunes. 

It is not for us to say, that corporate and monied insti- 
tutions are all wrong, and of questionable moral influ- 
ence ; but the principles and limits of their safe adminis- 
tration seem to be very poorly defined. " A well-regula- 
ted institution" of this kind, all allow to be a blessing. 
But while one of this character is found dispensing its 
favors, there are thousands which have proved disastrous 
to all parties engaged in them. 

How far such institutions tend to relax moral obliga- 
tion and weaken a sense of personal responsibility, by 
presenting temptations to dishonesty stronger than men 
ought ordinarily to encounter, are questions of serious mo- 
ment. And whether consolidated wealth, creating power- 
ful monopolies, and subjecting men to dependence upon 
their pleasure, is not destructive of that kindness and 
indulgence on the one hand, and of that keen sense of 
obligation and gratitude on the other, which are the basis 
and the bond of the social, business community, we are 
not prepared to decide. 



56 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

That universal system of operation, which these insti- 
tutions have adopted, proffering credit not alone to cha- 
racter, business talent and the responsibility of the borrow- 
er, but to the pecuniary strength of the security he offers, 
lays the ground for that mutual deception and distrust 
which often ends in the bankruptcy of all parlies, and 
the relaxing of a sense of moral obligation in each. The 
borrower hazards resources that are not his own, and 
the lender enforces his legal claims on the party that has 
received no benefit, and the surety, thus unexpectedly 
involved, while he bows to the stern mandate of the 
law, never feels that peculiar moral obligation which his 
own immediate contracts create. The obligation may 
be as strong, but it is of another kind, and as he meets it, 
under the severity of a rich corporate claimant, reflecting 
perhaps upon the integrity of the borrower, if not charg- 
ing him with positive delinquency, there is obviously on 
all concerned an unfavorable moral influence. 

It cannot be questioned, that the whole system of 
credit by associated corporate bodies, and the extended 
demand for its facilities, judging from the developments 
of the last twenty years, have produced no very favorable 
results, either to the pecuniary interest or moral character 
of the country. Repeatedly has the business and com- 
mercial community been severely tried within this brief 
period, wrecking thousands of extended fortunes, while 
those who have been most deeply engaged in this sys- 
tem, and those who have sought and enjoyed its facili- 
ties, are among the severest sufferers, both in a pecuniary 
and moral point of view. And we have often thought, that 
if Solomon, who wrote with inspired wisdom for a people 
almost wholly pastoral, and to them said, He that is 
surety for a stranger shall smart for it ; and he that 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 57 

hateth suretiship is sure ; A man void of understanding 
striketh hands and becoraeth surety in the presence of 
his friend : And again in direct caution : Be not thou 
one of them that strike hands, or of them that are 
sureties for debts: If thou hast nothing to pay, why 
should he take away thy bed from under thee 1 We say if 
Solomon, in a pastoral age and to a pastoral people, thus 
wrote, what would have been his cautions had he 
written for the present day ? And if Paul, the Roman 
citizen and the Hebrew of the Hebrews, amid all the 
enterprise and commerce of the Augustan age, wrote, 
Owe no man anything, but to love one another ; writing 
now, would not every epistle speak the salutary admo- 
nition, and reveal in decided terms the perils of sureti- 
ship and of extended obligations 1 It has been well 
said, " the debtor is the natural enemy of the creditor," 
and where payment is withheld, the creditor becomes 
the enemy of the debtor, and no disability is ordinarily 
heavy enough to relieve the unfortunate from severe 
reflections, if not imputations of actual dishonesty. 

Long experience and many recent events have shown 
that monied corporations afford no increased security to 
capitalists, nor are we aware, that they create any very 
enlarged facilities for active business to such as are 
entitled to credit from their own character, talents and 
personal responsibilities. On the contrary, we are driven 
to the conclusion, that from the peculiar character of 
monied corporations ; the security they require, and 
their relation to the borrower, that there is often less 
moral obligation felt towards them, than towards an ordi- 
nary private creditor, and as none of that interest is 
directly created towards him, and none of that gratitude 
which arises from the kind aid of the rich towards the 



58 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

young adventurer, the better feelings of both are not at 
all brought into exercise. 

Whatever maturity of reflection we may have brought 
to this subject, and whatever conclusions we may have 
drawn, such is the state of the world, that but little re- 
gard can be secured for them, at the present time, and it 
is chiefly in a moral point of view, that we revert to this 
subject at all ; though it is forced upon our consideration 
by the utter absorbing of millions from the widow and or- 
phan, wasted fortunes of thousands and the unparalled 
moral delinquency of the most responsible and respect- 
able of men, with the almost entire subversion of these 
very institutions themselves. 

We would, however, request the casuist and the ex- 
pounders of the doctrines of political economy, to bestow 
further thought upon this subject, both as to its commercial 
bearings and moral influences. We would ask those 
men, who in the senate, at the hustings, on the ex- 
change, in the crowded factories, at the land-auction, 
and amid all the splendor and luxury abounding, so loudly 
and confidently inquired in 1836, ' What has the credit 
system done for this country?" repeat the same inquiry in 
1843. The answer shall not be given, in prostrate for- 
tunes, private losses, general bankruptcy and universal 
embarrassment, but in that wide wreck of moral charac- 
ter, universal distrust, unparalleled dishonesty in high 
places of trust, which the wealth of commerce cannot re- 
pay, nor centuries of national prosperity repair.* 

* Mr. Barnard, in Cungies?, says, thatin the United Slates 90 out of 
every 100 who buy and sell, become bankrupts ; in England, 35 out of 
every 100. In the United States the creditors receive, on an average, 
about 8 per cent, from the estates of insolvents; in England, they 
receive about 35 per cent. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 59 

III. The duty of selecting men as Magistrates and Ru- 
lers of unimpeached moral integrity. 

We are driven to the consideration of this subject, by 
that party spirit and proscription which so often disturbs 
and endangers the safety of legislation and the due ad- 
ministration of law. The government of this country is 
not of that self-perpetuating character which frees the 
people from responsibility and solicitude in its adminis- 
tration ; but it is created by the people, and is ordinarily 
what they will it shall be. In such a government, no- 
thing is more to be feared, than the administration of 
party, ever active to perpetuate its ascendency. Chafed 
by opposing interests, its operations will be embarrassed, 
and its temptations strong to corrupt by patronage, or 
overawe by proscription. We have seen too much of 
this to doubt its reality or question its dangerous ten- 
dency. 

Under the influence of party, men lose the remem- 
brance of their own avowed principles and pledges in 
private life. Places of trust and emoluments of office are 
the bribes which too often stain the hands of executive 
power and corrupt the aspirants for political preferment. 
This is virtual bribery, and needs only a competent tri- 
bunal for a decision, and it is felony at law. 

Every indication of general uneasiness at this party 
purchase and proscription, is a happy indication of re- 
form, and when private citizens shall refuse to aid all 
party aspirants, and no more beset the sources of govern- 
ment patronage with petitions for office, either for them- 
selves or others, at the expense and removal of worthy 
incumbents, then, and not till then, may we hope to see 
this demoralizing system done away. While men are 
corrupt enough to sell themselves to the leaders of a party 



60 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

administration, or to government at all, we fear that there 
will not be wanting purchasers to pay the price of their 
profligacy. While we hope to see from every quarter 
and from every class of the community such decided dis- 
satisfaction with this corrupting policy of patronage and 
proscription on party grounds, we are confident that an 
effectual remedy is to be found no where, but in the hands 
of the people. And it becomes the duty of all the friends 
of good order and political morality, to speak in decided 
tones of disapprobation, that a correct and efficient moral 
sentiment may be created upon this vital question. The 
great effort should now be, to break up the government of 
party, to soothe its asperity, and restore the ascendency of 
moral principle, making capability and honesty the only 
essential qualifications for office. To effect this, it be- 
comes the duty of the Christian citizen, to select and ele- 
vate men as magistrates and rulers of unimpeached 
moral integrity. 

It is not necessary nor desirable that religious men 
retire from the responsibilities of civil life, but they are 
required to engage in more vigorous efforts to guard 
against the increase of that corruption which already so 
extensively prevails, so that men, without sufficient quali- 
fications may not thrust themselves forward, and by the 
aid of associates equally unworthy, demand and secure 
the suffrage and support of Christians, and thus become 
seated in the most responsible places of trust, as our law- 
givers and magistrates, empowered to undermine the mo- 
rals and best security of the country. 

We are required, as Christian citizens, to respect and 
pray for our rulers and all in authority ; that God would 
raise up good men to make and administer laws. It then 
certainly becomes our duty to select and vote for such 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 61 

men> and for such men only, as, from their intelligence 
and moral integrity, we can safely trust, and for whom 
we can reasonably implore and expect the divine bene- 
diction. 

" The exercise of the elective franchise," says Mr. 
Webster, " is a social duty, of as solemn a nature as man 
can be called to perform; a man may not innocently trifle 
with his vote ; every free elector is a trustee, as well for 
others as himself, and every man and every measure he 
supports has an important bearing on the interests of 
others as well as on his own." 

If we absent ourselves from those primary assemblies, 
where candidates for office are selected, our conduct to- 
wards them should be a decided demonstration of our ad- 
herence to correct principles, and our determination to 
support no man for office who is unworthy our confi- 
dence. As Christians, we are bound to adopt this rule 
of action, and equally so as patriots. We will al- 
low it possible not to forfeit Christian character by reject- 
ing this principle of action, but who can be a patriot and 
not adopt it? What is patriotism but love of country? 
Can that be love of country that commits its precious in- 
terests to men who will betray them ? who can give no 
guaranty for faithfulness ? 

Let it be distinctly understood, that we have no refer- 
ence to party organizations, nor to religious sects. Nor 
do we demand or advise, that candidates selected for 
office, shall be professed members of any church com- 
munion : But, we do say, that as Christians, we are not 
at liberty to select and aid in elevating men to places of 
trust, who have not the requisite qualifications for meet- 
ing the responsibilities we impose upon them. 

We are aware that, in the present state of party organ« 
6 



62 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

ization, questions of difficulty may be met which will for 
a moment greatly embarrass us. But we are never to 
become, in any sense, the instruments of party dictation, 
unless we are prepared to be made the victims of party 
misrule and violence. We are not at liberty to sacrifice 
our principles as Christians to continue or countenance 
that political intrigue and corruption which often invades 
alike the halls of legislation and the sanctuaries of justice. 

It is in the power of the moral and Christian com- 
munity to check at once this giant eviL Not by the 
organization of new parties ; not by the officious obtru- 
sion of religion in any form ; but as Christian men of all 
parties, to decide at once, that under no circumstances 
shall our countenance or suffrage be given to men desti- 
tute of intellectual and moral qualifications sufficient to 
warrant a faithful discharge of the trust we commit to 
them. 

It may be pleaded that there is now a crisis and some 
important interests involved, and that others under the 
same Christian and moral obligations will not be gov- 
erned by our example. There will always be a crisis 
pleaded, and important principles said to be involved. 
But no crisis is so great, and no principles so important, as 
that crisis and those principles, which we are now con- 
sidering. The crisis has arrived when virtue and mo- 
rality, political integrity, or political profligacy and gen- 
eral desecration of moral principle, are to be sustained 
or abandoned by the moral and religious portions of the 
community. The great question is to be settled, whether 
Christian citizens are to be governed by the spirit and 
laws of their religion in the exercise of their civil rights, 
or submit to the domination of blind and reckless party 
zeal. Though Christians, we do not cease to be citizens 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 63 

of the state, nor can we in one relation, either forfeit or 
resign the rights and responsibilities of the other. And 
it is a part, and an important part of our religion, to 
study and secure the advancement of the public safety 
and morality, by exercising our civil rights, and meeting 
our political obligations, with a strict regard to the divine 
precepts. It is in this way only that we can be good 
citizens, and at the same time maintain our Christian 
integrity. It is in this way that we are to prepare the 
government, which, in common with others of our fellow- 
citizens, we have framed, to return to us that protection, 
and to secure those ends for which it was originally 
designed. It is this way, too, that we may keep out the 
seeds of corruption and the elements of discord, which 
other and fatal influences may plant in the vitals of our 
social system. 

We cannot doubt that the best men of all parties 
desire to see these principles revived and sustained ; and 
we believe that it is in the power of the moral and reli- 
gious portions of the community to redeem them trium- 
phantly. Their influence should always be salutary, 
and in many cases it may be controlling, and happily 
adjust the balance of power in the selection of men for 
office in every party; and this can be done by refusing 
to sacrifice or compromit their moral and religious prin- 
ciples to any temporary or party purposes. Not only so, 
but it is their duty also for the sake of their example, to 
say distinctly, that they will not be overruled in the dis- 
posal of their votes by the decisions of party. The man 
that sells himself to party, throws away the shield of his 
virtue and the last security of his patriotism. A Chris- 
tian citizen cannot do it. 

It is upon the foregoing principles alone, that we can 



64 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, 

guard against those baleful influences, which in past 
ages brought on the fatal union of church and state, in 
which the state was corrupted and the church died. 

Already political parties approach whole denominations 
of nominal Christians with virtual bribes, and seek to 
bind them to their respective interests by redeemed 
pledges, which it was wrong to make and which it is 
robbery to fulfil. At the same time others are rebuked 
for resisting these approaches, and for their maintenance 
of constitutional law and moral rectitude. 

In the face of all this, we should remember that while 
Christians, we are also citizens of the commonwealth ; 
and that, in discharging our duties to the state, we are 
bound by the principles of our religion. We are to ren- 
der unto Caesar the things that be Caesar's, and unto God 
the things that are God's. Civil and political action in 
all their details demand the conservative influence of a 
divine Christianity.* 



* The following patriotic and Christian sentiments, are from the 
aged and distinguished correspondent A. A. of the New-York Obser- 
ver, whose name is enough to commend his opinions to every one. 

" If Christians would exercise their right of suffrage conscientiously, 
in the fear of God, and with a single eye to his glory ; and if pious 
men, well qualified for public stations, would deny themselves, and 
consent to go into stations of influence and usefulness, much might 
be done, if not to purify our halls of legislation, yet to preserve them 
from total destruction by mingling with them the conservative influ- 
ence which genuine piety would produce." * * " Let the pious then 
combine their influence, and bring forward as candidates for public 
stations, men of piety and talent. It is not meant that a sectarian 
influence should be brought to bear on our elections. Few things, in 
a government like ours, are more to be dreaded." * * " The certain 
consequence of any one denomination attempting to acquire a poli- 
tical influence, will be to unite all other denominations against 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 65 

§ II. THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES AND 
OF ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATIONS IN FORMING THE 
CHARACTER OF CIVIL INSTITUTIONS. 

While the civil government greatly affects religion, 
in aiding or checking the diffusion of its spirit, and shap- 
ing its ecclesiastical organizations : religion does much 
towards imparting vitality to government, and in mitiga- 
ting or enhancing the severity of its features, as well as 
contributing to the character of its original structure. 
Hence the iron arm of Pagan and Mahomedan despot- 
ism ; the almost equal tyranny of Spain and the Italian 
states. It is from this same reciprocal action of state 
polity and religion, that we meet every where, with the 
darkness and cruelty of the Romish communion, the 

them." * * " Let Christians of every denomination unite to elect 
good men, men of wisdom and integrity, who would honestly aim at 
the good of the commonwealth." * * "In a government such as 
ours, good men must come forward and claim and exercise their 
rights, or the consequences will be fatal. There are already ominous , 
appearances in our political horizon. We have, within a few years, 
witnessed events which the founders of our political institutions 
never apprehended. Dangers thicken around our once happy coun- 
try. "While every thing is proceeding prosperously, Christians may 
be indulged in their love of retirement and peace ; but when the 
republic is in jeopardy, it behooves them to come out and exert their 
influence to preserve our free institutions, and to ward ofT those 
evils which threaten to mar or destroy our peace, order, and liberty. 
There is no need for them to embark zealously in party politics." 
* * " It would be wisdom in them to cast their vote in favor of a 
candidate whose politics differed from their own in regard to the 
expedience of particular laws and measures, provided he was a truly 
good man." 

6* 



66 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

most restricted rights of citizenship among the people. 
We find the mixed and anomalous confederacies of Ger- 
many, Holland and Switzerland, with the equally anoma- 
lous character of the churches of the Heidelberg and 
Helvetic faith : the kingdom of Great Britain with its 
republican and aristocratical Parliament, and its nominal 
monarchy, clinging to its own fading shadow, with its 
unstable church, as crowding dissenters and a teeming 
population are demanding the fullest liberty of the 
gospel. And hence it is, we have the solitary spectacle 
of our free institutions with the Scotch presbytery shorn 
of its original and unscriptural assumptions, and Inde- 
pendency in its various forms, reserving to itself its 
inherent rights, and acknowledging no superior but its 
Divine Master.* Every ecclesiastical polity, harmoni- 
sing with other forms of civil government, is obviously 
not indigenous to this soil; and whatever may be its 
pretensions to a heavenly origin, in its outward frame- 
work it receives but little sympathy from our free insti- 
tutions, and its influence upon our civil polity becomes a 
question of interest to every citizen. 

From these considerations we shall speak freely, and 
we hope kindly, of ecclesiastical institutions as at pres- 
ent existing among us, and as these shall be found to 
favor the stability of our government and the growth of a 
spiritual religion, they claim our confidence and support. 

If we mistake not, there is often gleaming from the lift- 
ed folds of the ancient economy, and still more clearly to 
be met in the Gospel, indications of truths and command- 
ing principles, which go far to settle the nature of that 

* It has been said, that Mr. Jefferson was indebted for some of the 
finest republican features of his Declaration of American Indepen- 
dence to the elaborate constitution of a certain Independent Congre- 
gational Church. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 67 

government, which is best fitted to the enlightened and 
Christian state of the world. And with this conviction, 
we are driven to the consideration, yea, the cordial adop- 
tion of those sentiments in religion, and those principles 
of ecclesiastical polity, which most harmonise with these 
scriptural views. There are religious sentiments and 
ecclesiastical organizations which, in their legitimate ac- 
tion, have ever proved themselves friendly to the civil and 
religious liberties of mankind. It was in view of these 
sentiments, that the observing and sagacious foreigner, 
to which we have before alluded, while looking over this 
country, and searching the more latent causes of its civil 
immunities, deliberately writes, that, " The religion which 
declares all are equal in the sight of God, will not refuse 
to acknowledge that all citizens are equal in the eye of 
the law." And with equal justice and beauty added, 
" This same religion is the companion of liberty in all its 
battles, and in all its conflicts ; the cradle of its infancy 
and the divine source of its claims." 

And what religion is this 1 What are its sentiments 
and its ecclesiastical polity 1 This man had gone into 
the heart of New England, to its firesides, to its social 
circles of religious culture, and to the republican arrange- 
ments of its primitive churches. And it was thence he 
traced the legitimate action of Christian sentiment and 
order on the civil institutions and political movements of 
the country. 

If we revert to the days of the Stuarts of England, and 
the conflicts of those sanguinary times, we shall find a 
given set of religious opinions in most powerful action, 
and all tending to the revulsion of long established orders 
of priestly and church oppression, and which found their 
end only in the security of personal and equal rights, in 
the polity of the church, as well as in the order of the 



68 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

state. If we travel farther into the past, and review 
the scenes enacted on the continent of Europe, when al- 
most universal darkness and oppression reigned, we shall 
there find this same peculiar class of religious opinions, 
working manfully, and ultimately rising in the majesty 
and power of the Reformation. Their end, at that time, 
was the same, the security of equal rights in the church, 
and, as far as the age allowed, an increase of civil liberty. 
And we may say, that the germ of political, as well as of 
ecclesiastical freedom, then sprung forth, and we, who 
now live in all the benefits of both, owe to the Puritan of 
England, to the Monk of Germany, and the indomita- 
ble spirits of Switzerland, more than we can ever pay. 
We acknowledge the debt, not in insolvency, but in the 
richness of the treasure, which in faithfulness to them 
and the world, we must defend and transmit unimpaired. 
We need not say, that it was the spirit of the Gospel ; 
a simple, scriptural faith ; a church of equal orders in its 
ministry, and of equality of rights in its members, that 
governed these men, and girded them for such achieve- 
ments. We have history as the memorial and preserver 
of their faith and their aims. And that historian who was 
no friend to the one and a bitter enemy of the other, has 
declared that England owes to the Puritans all the liberty 
she now enjoys.* The commonwealth, under Cromwell, 
brings double weight to this high testimony. Here was 
a warring of principles, both political and religious, which 
cannot be misunderstood. They were the religious prin- 
ciples of Geneva, and the kindred political principles of 
equal rights among mankind, in both civil and ecclesias- 
tical institutes. And the courtiers of kings, and the cour- 
tiers of prelates, together with the presbytery, clamorous 

* Hume. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 69 

of divine right, were all combined, hand passibus cequis, 
against them.* 

At this time it must be acknowledged there were other 
religious sentiments and other principles of ecclesiastical 
polity, which were, and ever have been, in vigorous 
action against the sentiments and principles, both poli- 
tical and religious, of the Reformers and the Puritans. 
And history has decided as clearly, that these sentiments 
and orders of church have ever sympathised with gov- 
ernments wholly foreign to our own, and which are at 
war with its genius and its aims. These, wherever 
found, must be working against the equalising influence 
of free institutions, both of the church and the state. If 
it be true, that " the religion that declares all are equal 
in the sight of God, will not refuse to acknowledge that 
all citizens are equal in the eye of the law ;" then 
surely, the religion that declares all men are not equal 
in the sight of God, will demand a distinction in the eye 
of the law. And is it not so ? Who opposed the rise of 
free institutions in Switzerland, Germany? and France,? 
The papacy of Rome. And it does so to this hour. Who 
opposed the action of free institutions in England ? 
Rome alone ? No ; but all and equally the fast friends 
of the Prelacy. Here the prelacy and the papacy go 
hand in hand. And which warred the best, and waded 
deepest in blood, let history decide. To whom did the 

* The general diffusion of knowledge as well as an increase of 
civil liberty, was an object uniformly sought by the friends of the 
Reformation, and the same has steadily been pursued by the advo- 
cates for popular rights every where. The most enlightened period 
of English history, when the foundation of the Royal Society was 
laid, and many other of her most valuable institutions were projected, 
was during the commonwealth, under Cromwell. But when did the 
Romanists, or the fast friends of high church principles, ever unit© 
to advance the cause of popular education] 



70 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

advocates of the divine right of kings and of passive obe- 
dience look, but to the defenders of the divine right of 
the Prelacy and its apostolical claims to all the immu- 
nities of the gospel, and the passive submission of men 
to their exclusive ministrations ? Did not the apostate 
James I., who, with lifted hands swore to maintain the 
" solemn league and covenant" of the Kirk of Scotland, 
become so charmed and intoxicated with this harmony, 
that as he passed the Tweed, within nine months, 
avowed it as his daily motto, " No bishop, no king /" 

And it is seriously doubted whether the English throne 
could stand and her costly aristocracy live, were it not for 
her bench of bishops and her exclusive church. The 
national sympathy between the monarchical aristocracy 
and the ecclesiastical orders before us, has always been 
clear and strong, and it was never more so than now, 
though shorn of much of its power to act. 

While we wish as far as possible to avoid the appear- 
ance of partizan zeal and all invidious comparisons, it 
will be necessary for us to speak more often of the papa- 
cy of Rome and of the prelacy of England, than of any 
other parties. Not because these are the only denomina- 
tions where these principles have appeared, but because 
they here find, from the politico-ecclesiastical structure of 
these two communions, their most genial and favorable 
associations — so much so, that the responsibility of their 
origin and maintenance lies almost exclusively with them. 
Yet, let it be distinctly understood that it is principles, 
and not men or sects, which we are reviewing and from 
which we are compelled to dissent. 

We are all acquainted with the action of these princi- 
ples in the time of our revolution, and with all the noble 
exceptions that these times record, there were few to be 
found who adopted the doctrines of divine right in the 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 71 

clergy or of exclusive power in any church, that favored 
the liberal sentiments of the revolution and who joined in 
the struggles of that day. Men of Puritan principles 
and faith were the advocates and the founders of our free 
institutions. Others were sheltered from the storm or re- 
tired to the protection of " legitimacy" in their native 
land.* 

The ascendency of the evangelical sentiments of the 
Reformers and the Puritans has been so general and 
the minds of the people so engrossed in cares inci- 
dent to a young and growing country, that little atten- 
tion has been given to the secret workings of opposing 
sentiments, or to the growth of other ecclesiastical claims. 
The decided victory achieved in England at the downfall 
of the Stuarts, contributed to quiet our fears as to the 
return of the evils of their disastrous reigns. 

But times have somewhat changed, and the shaken dy- 
nasties of Europe are looking around for the old securi- 
ties to the " divine right of kings," in the " divine right 
of priests" and churches. And if we mistake not, we 
shall hear again, " no bishop, no king" 

We cannot misunderstand the action of Catholic go- 
vernments on the continent of Europe, and their efforts 
to establish their faith every where. Nor can we misun- 
derstand that remarkable retrogression in England, of 
bishops and churches toward the sentiments and usages 
of Popery. There is obviously a reunion of ecclesiasti- 
cal opinions and efforts to sustain, not only the divine 
right of church prerogatives, but the divine right of kings 
also. And who are sympathising in these movements 1 
Are they the friends of free institutions 1 Are they the 

* It may be said Washington was an Episcopalian, and Caroll o f 
Carolton, a Catholic. True they were, but neither were high-church- 
men or exclusive religionists. 



72 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

friends of freedom any where ? It is not for us to dis- 
guise the fact that, there are men every where who sym- 
pathise in all the movements to sustain and advance these 
arrogant principles. And we are free to say, that these 
high church principles any where, and in whatever com* 
munion, are hostile to free institutions in the state, and 
are to be met and opposed alike every where. 

There is a tendency in the times to laxness in religious 
sentiments, to liberty bordering on licentiousness, and 
these, where Christianity is not wholly discarded, uni- 
formly resort, with boastful confidence, to mere forms and 
ceremonies, to the rejection of a spiritual religion. This 
is not confined exclusively to any one communion, but is 
diffusing its leaven in every direction. Rather, we should 
say, it is working itself out of every spiritual association 
of the Christian family, and urging its way back to its 
original source, the bosom of that communion whence it 
sprung. We hear the lofty tone of " divine right," not 
alone from the papacy and the prelacy, but sometimes, as 
of old, from the aspiring presbyter, and even the descend- 
ant of the Pilgrims will talk of his scriptural system. 
There is also an unmanly, if not an unholy, effort to re- 
flect upon that Bible, which has cheered millions for cen- 
turies with its pure translation of the original Scriptures, 
and a natural demand, that all shall be under one symbol 
or not of Christ. There is also a feeble return to the 
" habits" and " rags" of the sixteenth century, when the 
pious and learned Hooper was persecuted and imprison- 
ed, for refusing the " frock and the surplice," at his in- 
stallment as a bishop. Grave ecclesiastical bodies are 
commending to their clergy mere articles of dress, while 
prelates are ordering the arrangements of church furni- 
ture, with all the interest that essential verities demand. 
Just as if. drapery, silk and lawn, had anything to do with 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 73 

Christ or his ministry, or the manner in which the com- 
munion table shall stand, with the faith that partakes of 
its elements. All of this, wherever found, is tending to- 
wards Rome, and strengthening the arm of the Man of 
Sin. As Christians, and as Christian citizens, we must 
protest against it. It is the genius of anarchy in the 
state, begetting intolerance in political action, as in church 
enactments. 

If we were under the Jewish economy, with the insti- 
tutes of rites and typical service, we should defend and 
hallow the mitre, the vest and the fringes of the priestly 
garments — yea, the candlestick, the snuffers, the incense 
and the ashes of the altar, we would, if necessary, con- 
tend for ; but now, we dismiss the whole and believe it 
both foolish and wicked to carry over to a simple, 
unsymbolising gospel either Aaronical or pagan exter- 
nals : and above all when we remember their popish ten- 
dencies, how they were once advocated and enforced by 
the prelacy, what wars they have occasioned, and what 
blood has been shed in their defense and enforcement 
upon others, we should more than reject the whole. 
Yes, with our Puritan ancestors, refuse them for con- 
science sake, as the symbols and the sanction of a cor- 
rupt, false and bloody system. 

It is with profound humility and regret that we are 
obliged in grave discussion to allude to such insignificant 
puerilities as clerical dress, and but for records of truth, 
no one could dream of its importance. Its past history 
demands a notice of its origin. When the church visible 
went to Rome, with the throne she inherited heathenism, 
and exchanged the spiritual favor of God for the protec- 
tion of Caesar. To adorn and dignify religion, and com- 
mend it to heathen Rome, the Roman toga became the 

7 



74 TrfE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, 

vestment of her clergy ; faint resemblance (a thought of 
after times) to the robe of Aaron. Hence sprung the 
costly garments of Romanism and the prelacy. And 
costly they have been to many a conscientious worshipper 
through ages of exclusion and suffering, and are still no 
doubt pampering to the pride of the youthful aspirant, 
who carrying his credentials visible and human, is 
devout only and can worship best amid gothic towers 
and cathedral chants, and is holiest of all when kneeling 
on the veritable stair-case of Pontius Pilate in the 
Church of St. Peter.* 

We repeat that the exclusive spirit that would excom- 
municate all other churches on the ground of a single 
form, and reject our long venerated Bible for the transla- 
tion of a word ; or that pretended respect for order that 
breaks up communions, and that more arrogant assump- 
tion of titles and rights, temporal and spiritual, from 
apostolical succession, or by exclusive divine commis- 
sion, are not to be overlooked or admitted for a moment 
in this age of light ; and we declare of the whole, there 
is not a shadow of foundation, either in Scripture or in 
the history of primitive times for their support. 

We confess that we have never been free from appre- 
hensions, considering the tendencies of human nature, 
and that necessity which most men feel for some kind 

* The more conscientious Christian converts rejected the toga or 
robe, and used the pallium or common cloak : " a plain 'garment 
commonly worn by Christians." Hence the heathen derided the 
Christian, " even to a proverb," — a toga ad pallium ; which led Ter- 
tullian to write in defense of the cloak. The Roman, however, ulti- 
mately robed the Christian through centuries of darkness. See Lord 
King on the Heathen Origin of Clerical Dreas, Prim. Ch., p. 179„ 
andTertullian " De Pallio." 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 75 

of religion, that high church Arminianism would yet 
advance, and in connexion with high church pretensions 
to " divine rights," corrupt and waste the pure doctrines 
of the gospel, and war against the principles of the Refor- 
mation. We have long watched the natural affinities 
of the prelacy and the papacy, and we had sometimes 
hoped that the corruptions of the Romish Church would, 
be laid aside, and that her members, advancing intelligently 
to the safer discipline of a modified Episcopacy, and 
under the auspices of a spiritual Christianity, would 
return to the faith and worship of the primitive believers, 
with the Catholic spirit and elastic energies of an 
approaching millennium. But our hopes have been met 
by this strange retrogression of the prelacy to the cold 
embrace of the papacy. And if the public mind was not 
prepared for this religious advancement, it may yet be 
found best, that the reversion towards popery was thus 
early, that we might be more sensible of our common 
danger and the worth of those principles of civil govern- 
ment for which the reformers contended in argument and 
our fathers in arms. 

When we look at these melancholy recedings from 
intelligent piety and scriptural theology ; this return to 
forms and ceremonies to the undervaluing of the gospel 
in its simple ordinances ; and with this see that assu- 
ming air of prelatical authority and the courting of the pa- 
pacy, and the recommending of garments to the clergy of 
Jesus Christ, better suited to please Parisian women and 
mere children, than to the simple and spiritual worship 
of God, we cannot but revert again to the excellent 
Hooper, " persecuted about clothes," actually imprisoned, 
fatigued into preferment, and compelled against his will 
to be made an Episcopal bishop in the "habits" of 



76 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

popery. We are carried naturally to the times of bare- 
headed bishops and barefooted friars, coming forth as the 
ghostly attendants of the dying and the imperious rulers of 
the living ; — to many a Ximenes with hair-shirt and un- 
der-garments of canvass, with bread and water, the pen- 
ance of the spirit, yet with robes of office, the sword 
of state, and armies of thousands, the symbols and exe- 
cutioners of saintly power. We cannot but remember 
Parker and Laud wading in the blood of evangelical 
Christians. The thousand memorials of our father's faith 
and sufferings come fresh and forcibly before us. 

As Christians simply, we might, in view of all this, 
leave religion to take care of itself, and rest assured, 
that under God, it would survive every difficulty ; but 
as Christian citizens, we have something more to do. 
While we are required to contend earnestly for the faith 
once delivered to the saints, and are warned of these 
very adverse influences, we have civil interests to pro- 
tect, which are not only favorable to our social happi- 
ness, but friendly to our common Christianity. 

§ 1. The tendencies of High Church principles are, 
in our view, hostile to the peculiar institutions of our 
country.* 

There may be nothing dangerous to a republican gov- 
ernment, in the mere fact that a clergyman is ordained 

* la 1830 the author prepared an article on High Church and 
Arminian principles, which was inserted in the Christian Spectator, 
Vol. II. p. 120. Being responsible for that article, though anonymous 
■when published, he has transferred to the following pages whatever 
was suited to his present purpose, without any further notice of its 
previous publication. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 77 

by a bishop, rather than by " the laying on of the hands 
of the presbytery." If the power thus delegated is felt 
and acknowledged to be exercised as a matter of mere 
expediency, and is liable to be recalled when abused to 
evil purposes, we can see no serious objection to such a 
constitution of things, in any community who may think 
best to adopt it. But when this power is claimed by a 
few individuals, as concentrating in their persons by a 
divine right, and when obedience to this power is de- 
manded under the most awful penalties of God's displea- 
sure,* ic is a serious question, what must be the conse. 
quences of yielding to such a claim. 

Religious institutions and ordinances are indispensable 
to our social, civil and national existence. Hence we 
must have men set apart for religious purposes ; and these 
men, from their station and employment, their talents and 
character, will exert on the public mind and morals a 
prodigious influence. But on high Church principles, 
what kind of men are they 1 Just such as a small num- 
ber of prelates may please to commission and send among 
us. The prelate of an entire state, for example, on these 
principles, claims to hold, directly from God himself, the 
only power which is known, or can be acknowledged, of 
commissioning the ministers of Christ for millions of 
souls. No one can be recognised in this immense multi- 
tude of rational and immortal beings, as authorised to en- 
gage in the ministry of reconciliation, in any way, or un- 
der any ecclesiastical regulations, until he has gone to 
this " one man" subscribed the articles of his faith and 
taken from his hands, as the delegated agent of God, the 

* See Bishop Hobart's Companion for the Altar, fourth edition,, 
pp. 156—159. 



78 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

power to preach the gospel of his Son. Unparalleled 
concentration of power! Every minister within a terri- 
tory as large as all New England, on whose head the 
hands of an Episcopal bishop have not been laid, must at 
once leave his people, repair to the altar of prescription, 
or never again presume to preach the love of God, or 
break the bread of life. What a scene would be opened 
in this country by high church principles, carried out in- 
to full operation as they unquestionably ought to be, if 
resting on the authority of God ? The whole body of 
the ten thousand clergy of this country, with the excep- 
tion of a few hundred, are thrown out of the sacred office 
forever, unless their consciences and their faith could be 
made to quadrate with the standard set up by the smallest 
body of men among us. 

Upon these principles, what man on this continent 
would possess any thing like the power of an American 
prelate 1 And what power is so controlling as religious 
supremacy — what grasp so unyielding as that of indivi- 
dual authority, rendered fearless by popular submission, 
and awful as death by the presumed appointment of God? 
Such must inevitably be the power of those who hold the 
only authority known or believed to exist, of commission- 
ing the ministers of religion for sixteen millions of peo- 
ple — of saying who shall, and who shall not, preach the 
Gospel of Christ. 

And how shall the people resist the abuse of this 
power to the worst of purposes ? Shall they withdraw 
from the Church like our Puritan fathers, and seek reli- 
gious liberty under free institutions ! But this is declar- 
ed to be " rebellion against the Almighty Lawgiver and 
Judge ;" exposure io the " awful displeasure of Jehovah ;" 
at least, there is the utmost reason to believe so, and none 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 79 

to believe otherwise. This is declared to cut off the soul, 
at once, from all known, covenanted title or hope of eter- 
nal life. And as we are supposing the whole community 
to be fully enlightened on this subject, no one can be 
weak enough to sacrifice the salvation of his soul, for the 
poor recompense of maintaining the rights of a freeman. 
And if he attempts to do so, he must encounter all these 
fearful consequences, the rebuke of his diocesan, and the 
resistance of subordinate clergy, who are ever dependent 
upon his smiles. 

Let high church principles be universally embraced in 
this country, (as they ought to be if they are correct), 
and we have at once an Established Hierarchy, rest- 
ing, not on the weak basis of human enactments, like the 
English Church, founded as an establishment by Henry 
VIII. ; but on the immutable command of God himself! 
For the clergy of this church we are bound in conscience 
and by divine injunction, to provide a full and honorable 
support. " Let him that is taught in the Word communi- 
cate with him that teacheth in all good things." This 
support must all go only to such religious teachers, as a 
few prelates think proper to appoint and ordain. The 
people have no option in the case but this, they may, 
perhaps, arrange among themselves how to dispose, in 
the most satisfactory manner, of the individuals whom 
the diocesan shall designate for the care of their souls. 
The power of the men, too, thus commissioned, is tre- 
mendous. It lies with them to administer or withhold 
those sacraments, which, in the words of the high church 
historian, "are necessary to salvation." It is madness 
to hesitate, for a moment, in yielding implicit obedience 
to those who have the awful prerogative of granting or 
withholding a " covenant title" to eternal life, or 10 array 



SU THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

ourselves in " rebellion against (our) Almighty Lawgiver 
and Judge," by refusing to receive the rites of his reli- 
gion, on those conditions, which his " regularly ordained 
clergy" may think proper to prescribe. But what will be 
the consequence of such power in the clergy ? Unless 
we shut our eyes to all past history of our race, and sup- 
pose that God has conferred an absolute infallibility on 
the priesthood which he has placed over us, with such 
awful sanctions to enforce our obedience, we know and 
are certain, that this authority will be abused, in a man- 
ner totally inconsistent with our rights and privileges as 
freemen. 

And who is ignorant of the practical operation of high 
church principles, where they have acted without re- 
straint ? What principles created and sustained the 
Court of High Commission and the Star Chamber ? Who 
advocated the arbitrary measures of the House of Stuart? 
" Who opposed the glorious revolution of J 688 V And, 
in the language of Dr. John Rice, " who were the ene- 
mies of our own more glorious revolution ? High church- 
men^ the world knows." In the language of this, one of 
the ablest men of our age, we declare, " on the other 
hand, in all these instances, low churchmen and dissen- 
ters, united heartily and co-operated vigorously." *• The 
faithful records of history afford, on this subject, a series 
of most instructive facts, and warrant the strongest con- 
clusions as to the tendency of high church principles."* 



* " High Churohism and Toryism," says Dr. Bethune, " have ever 
gone hand in hand in England." — Horsely says, " Calvin was un- 
questionably a Republican," and adds, "that he endeavored to fa- 
shion the government of all the Protestant churches on republican prin- 
ciples," 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 81 

A prelate in this country has it in his power, to a 
great extent, to secure the prevalence and succession of 
his own sentiments and practices, whatever they may be ; 
for he appoints the clergy of his diocese, and they are 
such and only such, in sentiment and character, as he is 
pleased to commission. And they with the associated 
members of their own vestries, are to elect a successor 
to him who has thus created them. It is not difficult to 
see how certain this succession may be made, and how 
long the influence of error and religious intolerance 
may be perpetuated. To recall the power invested in 
one man by popular consent, is more difficult than to de- 
stroy the hereditary despotism of ages. And we ask, 
has not power and influence, established by the means be- 

" In the time of our Revolution, a Presbyterian loyalist was a ihing 
unheard of," says William B. Reed, Esq. of Philadelphia ; and he adds, 
" The debt of gratitude which independent America owes to the 
dissenting clergy and laity, never can be paid." T his gentleman 
presents us with the following extract fr^m a letter written by a tory 
of the Revolution, residing in New-York, two years before the De= 
claration of Independence. " You will have discovered that I am no 
friend to Presbyterians, and that I fix all the blame of these extra- 
ordinary American proceedings upon them. Very few Church of 
England people were among them. The Presbyterians have been 
the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures, and 
they always do, and ever will act against government, from that rest- 
less and turbulent anti-monarchical spirit, which has always distin- 
guished them every where, when they had or by any means could as- 
sume power, however illegally." 

James I., writing to Lords Jermyn and Culpepper, in answer to 
the request to abolish Episcopacy, says, " Show me any precedent, 
wherever presbyterial government and regal was together without 
perpetual rebellions. . . . Indeed, it cannot be otherwise, for the 
ground of their doctrines is anti-monarchical." — " No bishop — No 
KING." 



82 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

fare us, been already exerted even in this country with, 
great and unsparing effort, and with pernicious effect ? 
Have not the noblest designs of Christian charity; the 
exalted enterprise of giving the Bible to every family in 
our land ; the most generous efforts for the instruction of 
oppressed Christian nations, or of the heathen world, ly- 
ing in wickedness been repeatedly shut out from nearly the 
whole of an extended diocese by a single word ? " The 
bishop does not approve of these efforts, he thinks it im- 
proper for any one to solicit our aid for such objects" ! 
A hundred churches are instantly closed, and ten thou- 
sand hearts are steeled against those men, who are plead- 
ing perhaps for those very charities, which originated in 
the zeal and piety of the evangelical of the English 
Church. We forbear to allude to other instances of pre- 
latical authority. We call in question no man's motives. 
We undertake not to decide whether any individual has 
acted right or wrong, in the exercise of the power thus 
assumed. But we do ask, must not that system be wrong, 
hostile to our liberal institutions and pernicious to the in- 
tarests of true religion, which thus tends to place the 
consciences of a whole diocese under the control of a 
single man, and to make our religious charities, the no- 
blest characteristic of the present age, dependent on his 
will, and the faith of the whole community to be governed 
by his dictation ? " Religious principles will be felt eve- 
ry where. No circle of private life, no department of 
government, but must feel them. They belong to the 
mind itself." W r hat then must be the effect on freedom of 
mind among us ; on the exercise of private judgment, 
and above all on the rights of conscience, if such a sys- 
tem should ever become predominant in this country ? 
The history of the world gives but one answer. 



THE CHRISTIAN ClTlZEff. 83 

While therefore we see nothing hostile to our free in- 
stitutions in the Catholic spirit of those, who acknow- 
ledge every other evangelical communion to be equally 
with themselves, a part of the Church of Christ, we be- 
lieve that nothing but a standing miracle could save us 
from the consequences of a general prevalence of High 
Church principles, giving as they do to a few men, cho- 
sen for life, the only known power on earth of commis- 
sioning ten thousand clergy, and clothing that clergy with 
the awful prerogatives of granting or withholding these 
sacred ordinances, without which it is maintained, there 
is no known covenant of mercy, or promise of eternal 
life. If this be truth, and if these principles must gener- 
ally prevail among us, we can only say, that the les3 
must yield to the greater, the freedom of our country to the 
salvation of our souls. 

We must then look at the legitimate and ultimate re- 
sults of these things, and the light of past times must 
guide us. We must look at the natural sympathies and 
the strong affinities of these principles, with that more 
arrogant and superstitious communion which has ever 
warred against all freedom of opinions in religion and of 
all freedom in the walks of civil life. Which has alike 
her inquisition, and her fires for the heretic in the church 
and the rebel in the state. 

We say then let the baleful advances of popery, and 
the supercilious air of the prelacy awaken our vigi- 
gilance to guard our rights and principles. Let the peo- 
ple see to it and let the ministry be careful to hand down 
unimpaired and unsullied both the symbols of their office 
and the spirit of its devotion. The way is open and easy, 
the steps are natural and rapid from the corrupted spirit 
of religion to veneration for its empty externals and fiery 



84 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

zeal for its symbols, till you reach the mandate for entire 
confoimity or the lighted fagot that shall frighten the 
heretic and consume the dissenter. As face answereth 
to face in water, so the heart of man to man. The thing 
that hath been, it is that which shall be, and there is no 
new thing under the sun. Standing where we do do. let 
us never contribute to that intellectual debasement and 
moral corruption, that shall demand the re-enactment of 
scenes of terror still fresh and vivid before us. Let the 
wars of Grenada and the slaughtered jews of Spain* ; 
the carnage of St. Bartholemew's day in Francef ; the 
millions of confiscated estates and the butchered thou- 
sands of papal Rome and of the English hierarchy,! ever 
admonish us of what human nature can be and what hu- 
man power can perpetrate in the name of religion. We 
would be watchful and jealous of the symptoms of ec- 
clesiastical usurpation and refuse the badges of every 
exclusive order, lest we yet be required to give the same 
reasons for their rejection, that our fathers gave when dis- 

* Not less than from fifty to a hundred thousand Jews were supposed 
to have died from persecution, during the reign of the amiable Isabella, 
while hundreds of thousands were expelled from her dominions, for the 
honor and purity of the Roman religion. 

t More than thirty thousand Protestant Christians were slain in 
France, on this memorable anniversary and within the space of thirty 
days following, many of whom had been decoyed to Paris, for the 
purpose of destruction. 

% Not less than eight thousand persons are said to have died in 
prison and at the stake in England alone, without including those 
slain in Scotland and other places, for having refused to submit to 
the Acts of Conformity. The names of sixty thousand sufferers, on 
account of religion, are recorded, between Charles II. and William. 
The pecuniary damages sustained by the Puritans, have been esti- 
mated between fourteen and fifteen millions sterling. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 85 

senting from their Church and driven in exile from their 
country or burnt at the stake.* 

But it may be said, the " divine right" must be main- 
tained, and the " apostolical succession" preserved, what- 
ever may be the bearing of ecclesiastical organizations 
upon civil institutions. Although it transcends the limits 
assigned to this review, this requires a brief considera- 
tion. 

By the "divine right" and "apostolical succession," as 
here used, is meant, an exclusive privilege and power 
claimed by some single and separate denominations, as 
the only true church, and secured to such as they shall 
appoint by their spiritual heads, to illustrate and admin- 
ister the ordinances of the Gospel. For their peculiar 
ecclesiastical forms and arrangements, they claim the 
sanction of the Scriptures. All other professed churches, 
as they would designate them, and all ministers con- 
nected with them, they declare without authority from 
Christ, and without sanction from the Gospel. This right 
and this succession are claimed by the Romanists and by 
one section of the Episcopal denomination, to the exclu- 
sion of all other churches. While some of other sects 
may have occasionally advanced their claim to the same 
riiiht and succession, it has not been to the utter exclu- 
sion of all other branches of the Christian family. This 
has been reserved for the Romanists and the high church 

* We hope to be freed from the charge of invidious comparisons by 
so closely associating the papacy and the prelacy in this discussion ; 
but we have found it impossible to avoid it ; and as their natural af- 
finities are now so extensively claimed and by comparatively so few, 
of either party denied, we shall be excused for not being able to keep 
them more distinct. 

8 



86 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

party of the Episcopal denomination. To these our at- 
tention is of course at this time restricted.* 

If the prelacy of the Episcopal church is of divine right 
or of exclusive scriptural authority, whence did Henry 
VIII. j with his revengeful and adulterous designs, secure 
it ? His unfaithfulness to his own wife, and his revenge- 
ful spirit towards the Roman pontiff, for refusing him di- 
vorce, led this haughty monarch of England to interdict all 
commercial intercourse with Rome, and to annex the 
ecclesiastical supremacy to his own crown. Forever after, 
it was ordained by his Parliament, " that the king is the 
only supreme head on earth of the Church of England." 
Thus severed from Roman supremacy, the English 
church became established in its present Episcopal cha- 
racter. Its head was found at Westminster, in Henry 
VIII., rather than in his holiness on the Tiber. Did this 
act of a faithless and profane sovereign unite the discor- 
dant and corrupted elements of the English communion 
to Jesus Christ as his church, and breathe into the dry 

* Bishop Hobart says, " That none can possess authority to ad- 
minister the sacraments but those who have received a commission 
from the bishops of the church." No one supposes that Dr. Ho- 
bart would allow any to bebishops, but Episcopal. Mr. Howe, once 
the pride of his party, and whose writings are still of high authority, 
says, " In her standards, the Episcopal Church expressly declares, 
that there have been three orders of ministers from the Apostle's 
times — and that no man shall be accounted a lawful minister without 
Episcopal ordination." " The only appointed road to heaven is 
through the visible church on earth." " Aliens from the church have 
no covenanted title." — Comp. for the Altar and " Letters to Mil- 
ler." The late Bishop Ravenscrofl and others are equally exclusive, 
and the whole Episcopal denomination, with but few exceptions, 
practically exclude all other churches from the fellowship of the 
Gospel. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 87 

bones of this sepulchre the vitality of spiritual being ? 
Was all this done by a divine right, and did it secure 
apostolical succession ? Was it by the same right, and 
in virtue of this succession, that Elizabeth consolidated 
the English Establishment in its present form 1 

Did Christ ever constitute revengeful and lascivious 
princes, with their regal power and the sword, the con- 
servatives and head of his spiritual flock ? Take the 
history of this Establishment in the line of its high pre- 
tentions, compare it with the simplicity and spirituality 
of the gospel, and the answer is at hand. 

It may be said, that this Establishment or the Epis- 
copal Church are of divine right, as coming down from 
the Romish communion, part and parcel of the papacy, 
transmitted from the polluted hands of the Man of Sin. 
Be it so. This very claim destroys its exclusive charac- 
ter, and it can, at best, but share its honors in common 
with the very church it repudiates.* Tracing its powers 
and immunities there, does it become invested with an 
exclusive " divine right," bearing away from that estab- 
lishment all its boasted prerogatives ? Does the apostol- 
ical succession rest here 1 Where does the Romish 
church find this succession, and the divine right on which 
it relies ? Amid the darkness, confusion and blood of 



* We have never yet been able to discover the validity of these 
claims to " the succession," as borrowed from the Roman See. It 
would seem that the prelacy destroyed their claims to this succes- 
sion, by tracing it to Rome, and, upon their own principles, leave it 
with the northern presbyter ; for the former were wholly excommu- 
nicated by the Pope, and every clerical and ecclesiastical power was 
revoked, while the establishment of the Presbytery at the north re- 
mained unassailed, many of whose clergy were acknowledged to be 
regularly constituted ministers, having received Episcopal ordination. 



88 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

those troubled ages, where? In the East or in the West ? 
At Rome or at Avignon ? And when the threefold con- 
test was waged, where was the divine right and the suc- 
cession ? The Romish church, whence the Episcopal 
professedly borrows its origin, has never settled the ques- 
tion, where this "right" lay, and through which dark 
channel the " succession" flows. Whence then, we may 
well ask, does the prelacy of England, receive her divine 
right and prided succession ? From Rome, they ever re- 
ply. As soon would we search for the pure springs of 
Jordan in the dark and tideless waters of the Dead Sea, 
whence nothing ever flows to cleanse or refresh. We 
are not astonished at this searching for " a divine right 
and apostolical succession," amid the conflicts of rival 
popes, and in the darkness and abominations of the 
^'Mother of Harlots." Some subjects are most ably de- 
fended amid confusion and night.* 



* On the principles of the High Church there appears to be no 
possibility of tracing an unbroken succession. Archbishop Whately 
says, " Who can undertake to pronounce, that during that long 
period, usually designated as the dark ages, no such taint (a broken 
succession) was ever introduced. Irregularities could not have been 
wholly excluded, without a perpetual miracle. We read of bishops 
consecrated ivhen mere children; of men officiating who barely knew 
their letters ; of prelates expelled and others put in their places by 
violence ; of illiterate and profligate laymen, and habitual drunkards, 
admitted to holy orders." T. Babbington Macauley says, (Essay 
Am. Ed., Vol. III. p. 299, " Extreme obscurity overhangs the history 
of the middle ages, and the facts which are discernible through that 
obscurity prove that the church was exceedingly ill-regulated. We 
read that sees of the highest dignity were openly sold, transferred 
backwards and forwards by popular tumult ; bestowed sometimes by 
a profligate woman on her paramour ; sometimes by a warlike baron 
on his kinsman, a mere stripling. We read of bishops of ten years 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 89 

Bishop Hoadley well says, " I am fully satisfied that 
till a consummate stupidity can be happily established, 
and universally spread over the land, there is nothing 
that tends so much to destroy all due respect to the 
clergy, as the demand of more than can be due to them ; 
and nothing has so effectually thrown contempt upon a 
regular succession of the ministry, as the calling of no 
succession regular but what was uninterrupted ; and the 
making of the eternal salvation of Christians to depend 
upon that uninterrupted succession, of which the most 
learned must have the least assurance, and the unlearned 
can have no notion, but through ignorance and credulity." 

But it may be said, the media descendendi, or the hands 
through which it comes down, is not at all destructive of 
the divine right transmitted from Christ ; and that the 
succession may legitimately lie here. But where is the 
proof that it was transmitted from Christ, or by him ever 
committed to such hands ? We will soon state the im- 
possibility of any such conclusion. 

old ; office years old ; of many popes who were boys." The state oi 
Ireland was still worse, and after mentioning the manner in which 
ordinances were administered, he adds, "we are at a loss to conceive 
how any clergyman can feel confident that his orders have come down 
correctly." "It is probable," he adds, "that no clergyman of the 
Church of England can trace up his spiritual genealogy from bishop 
to bishop even so far back as the time of the Reformation. There 
remains fifteen or sixteen hundred years, during which the trans- 
mission of his orders is buried in utter darkness." Baronius, the 
strenuous defender of his church, acknowledges all this, and yet 
boasts of apostolical succession. A correspondent of the London 
(Episcopal) Record informs us, that it is well known that the baptism 
by Episcopal hands of Archbishop Seeker, Bishop Butler and Arch- 
bishop Tillotson, has been called in question, and never clearly 
proved. "What then, on Episcopal principles, becomes of the suc- 
cession 1 

8* 



90 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

And we would here ask. on the ground of these exclu- 
sive pretensions, with what consistency is Scotland re- 
ceived into favor, with her iron-handed faith, " her league 
and covenant," ever at war with the prelacy ? Here are 
legalized ministrations, valid if not of divine right ; while 
the prelate becomes the dissenter, without favor from the 
crown, with no validity to his own ministrations though 
claiming unbroken succession from Christ himself.* Why 
is PresbyteFianism north of the Tweed, so legitimate, 
divine and valid, while south of that narrow stream, it is 
schismatical, unauthorized and invalid, so that not even 
the grace of God can extend " covenant mercies" to its 
own subjects ? But for living examples, who would 
dream of such trifling with a spiritual and divine religion, 
left to us in the gospel, so pure in its doctrines and s° 
simple in its forms ? 

We prefer to leave both Rome and Canterbury, and 
borrow divine right and our succession from Jesus Christ, 
not from any pretended virtue in his incarnate hands or 
of the " presbytery" that succeeded him, but from the 
gift of his grace and the Holy Spirit to all that believe. 
On this foundation we build both the church and our 
hopes ; and all of every name who rest here we receive 
as Christians, asking and enforcing no rites but the sim- 
ple ordinances significant of the Spirit and of the Cross ; 
and even these we require, not for their own virtue to 

* It is a question of some interest how men who are so tenacious 
of this "divine right," can recognize three separate denominations 
as legally in possession of its immunities : as in Canada, where th» 
papacy, the prelacy and the Scotch presbytery, are admitted to 
privileges, under the sanction ol her majesty the head of the Eng- 
lish Church Establishment and of the bench of spiritual lords, the 
sworn defenders of an exclusive succession. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 91 

save, but as the pledges and symbols of things unseen 
and spiritual. 

The church looks for her ministry, called of God, as 
was Aaron, not sent as Tetzel from Leo X. She expects 
the grace of God in their ministrations of truth ; not 
from baptisms, indulgences, confirmations and extreme 
unction, which the price of Simon Magus might pur- 
chase. We ask for our clergy the attending and attest- 
ing symbols of the Holy Spirit, and not the worshippers 
of a formal Christianity, that talks more of the church, its 
ministrations, " covenant mercies," its liturgy and shadow- 
ing rites, than of justification by faith, the sovereignty of 
God in regeneration and holiness of life. We require 
ministrations that shall abase the soul with the con- 
sciousness of its own guilt and wretchedness, and that 
shall exalt God alone in the work of its renewal and 
reunion to himself. With such qualifications and such 
a succession we are satisfied. We have here a living, 
divine right, and a true apostolical succession. 

And yet we would by no means speak lightly of the 
ministerial succession, or call in question the divine right 
to all the powers and immunities which belong to that 
succession. We believe there is a divine right to 
preach the gospel and administer its ordinances, and 
that this right may be traced back in the line of the 
Church of Christ, whose ministers are to be acknow- 
ledged as his, and are owned to be such by the attending 
influences of the Spirit. 

The inquiry becomes important, what constitutes a le- 
gitimate succession to the first apostles of Christ ? We 
say to the apostles, yet we wish to be understood^ 
that there were no successors to the apostles, as such. 
The apostles had no successors. From its very nature 



92 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

their apostolic office ended with them. They were ap- 
pointed and invested with power for a special purpose, to 
carry out the designs of Christ in founding a new religion. 
For this end, the power of working miracles, the gift of 
tongues and inspiration were conferred upon them ; and 
who shall presume on a succession to these divine in- 
vestments ? When we ask, then, what constitutes a suc- 
cession to the apostles of Christ, we speak of them only 
as ministers of the Gospel, in distinction from their cha- 
racter as apostles. 

To answer this inquiry, what constitutes a legitimate 
succession, we must ascertain what constitutes a valid, 
authorized, and divinely acknowledged clergy. With 
them, we shall find the true succession without controver- 
sy. We shall not at this time discuss the question of 
spiritual qualifications, and the various evidences of an 
accepted ministry. It is enough for us to say, that the 
mere consent, or transmission of power from one set of 
men to another, to administer external ceremonies, can no 
more unite them to the evangelical, spiritual, and accepted 
ministry of the Saviour's original designation, and enti- 
tle their ministrations to human respect, and the divine 
approbation, than the garments of the rabbies and priests 
of the Jewish service, can constitute the officiating 
servants of the synagogue, the true Israel of God. The 
elements essential to the accredited ministery of Christ 
are not to be found in anything merely external ; and 
these, by whomsoever handed down, can form no true 
succession. The thing is utterly impossible. Neither 
the qualifications for the ministry, nor the succession to 
its immunities rest here. If the charter on which every 
true church must be founded and the spiritual succession 
are not here, the nominal descent is but an empty name. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 93 

The doctrines and principles of the Bible, Christ and his 
Spirit, may not be there, and if not, the true apostolical 
succession cannot be. The principles and doctrines of 
the Bible are the charter of all ecclesiastical rights, and 
the spirit of these is essential to a valid ministry. 

These principles do not sanction the least laxness of 
sentiment or practice, either as to the church or the min- 
istry. So far from encouraging a presumptous advance 
towards the ministry, on personal or individual responsi- 
bility, they repel the claims of every one to confidence, 
but upon the highest and clearest scriptural authority. 

And when asked is there any such thing as a divine 
warrant or scriptural authority for the office of the min- 
istry, we unhesitatingly answer yes ; and we look for the 
authority of this ministry in the divine right whickrests 
in the church to confer it ; but which by no means be- 
longs exclusively to any one denomination. It is one of 
the inherent and inalienable prerogatives of Christians, to 
carry out their principles and the purposes of the gospel, 
and for this they must have a ministry. Christians, call- 
ed of God, and united in the fellowship and ordinances of 
the gospel, are a true Church of Christ, both scriptural 
and apostolical ; and whoever is here set apart for the 
administration of the ordinances, comes into the posses- 
sion of a divine right, and with proper spiritual qualifica- 
tions, has all the elements of a true minister of Jesus 
Christ. 

The only question that can here arise, respects the 
proper organization of a church, or what shall entitle it 
to a scriptural character, or the divine right essential to 
such a communion. 

We affirm that when any body of men become associ- 
ated upon the principles of the gospel, and for the pur- 



94 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

poses for which it was given, receiving its doctrines, and 
cultivating its spirit, they constitute a true Christian 
church invested with a divine right, the powers and im- 
munities of a scriptural succession. Where two or three 
are gathered together in my name, says the Saviour, there 
am I in the midst of them.* 

Governments, when properly organized, become "the 
powers that are ordained of God/' and in his name may 
assume and exercise all the prerogatives which the 
Scriptures authorize, and the good of the body politic 
demands. In no other sense, and in no other way, are 
there any divine rights of kirgs, and kingdoms, or any 
offices of trust. And no one will deny that " the pow- 

* Ireneus speaks of that church, which is in any place. Ea 
quae est in quoque loco Ecclesia. Lib. 2, cap. 56, p. 158. Diony- 
sius Alexandrinus says that, "when in Lybia, there came so many 
Christians unto him that even there he had a church." Euseb. lib. 7, 
p. 259. Tertullian thinks that three were sufficient to make a 
church. Ubi tres Ecclesia est. Exhort, ad Cassitat. p. 457. See 
Ecclesia Romana, Cyprian Epis. 31, &c. 

" A church," says Peter King, Lord High Chancellor of England, 
" the usual and common acceptation of the word, is a society of 
Christians, meeting together in one place, under their proper pastors, 
for the performance of religious worship and the exercise of Christian 
discipline. 

" The constituent parts of a church are called ckXcktoI, the '' elect," 
a5s\<pol, the "brethren," and nlarol, the "faithful." Epist. Fccles. 
Smyrn. ad Eccls. Philomel. Euseb. lib. 4, cap. 15, p. 134. 

" The Church of God," says Lightfoot, Vol. VII. p. 39, "are those 
or that company that worship or serve God throughout the world. This 
God has had since the beginning ; but we cannot say that he hath 
ever had a visible church. Visible churches (p.47) have died gene- 
ration after generation, yet the true church, he adds, like the soul 
of man, lives, though unseen." With this corresponds the Scripture 
representation of the Church of Christ which he has sanctified. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 95 

ers" of government " are ordained of God," though they 
have no unbroken succession, as to the agents that ad- 
minister them, and are every day changing in their 
structure and modes of administration. And government 
when corrupt, rejecting the principles upon which it 
was founded, the inalienable lights of men, may be 
supplanted, utterly destroyed, and that authority which 
rises on its ruins, becomes the " power that is ordained 
of God," and bears the sword in his name. And surely 
no one government amid the thousands of this world, can 
claim an exclusive possession of right ; to- be called, 
by way of eminence, the government, or the "pow- 
er ordained of God," to the rejection of all others, 
and assume authority over all others. Shall Eng- 
land, venerable and powerful as she is, erase this coun- 
try from the list of nations and reject our ministers 
of state ? Can she denationalize France, dethrone her 
citizen king and dismiss her envoys to the continent ? 
Is there 'no government but that of England ? With all 
her empire, armies and navies, let her claim pre-emi- 
nence and exclusive rights, and the world would laugh 
at her folly and spurn her powers. No more can any 
one church claim pre-eminent and exclusive prerogatives, 
and say to all others, you have no divine rights, no valid, 
and legitimate succession in your ministry ; you are no 
church ! This is incomparably more absurd than the high 
demand for universal temporal authority, as the mind 
and soul of man are freer and more indomitable than 
mortal sinews, and truth and grace like the unchained 
elements of life, free to all, and making all men free. 

As we see what it is in governments, that constitutes 
" the powers that are ordained of God," so it is equally 
clear, what it is, that lays the foundation for a divine 



96 THE CHRISTIAN CiTIZEN. 

right and its succession in the church. It is the organi- 
zation of the one on the immutable principles of moral 
obligation, inalienable rights, recognized and enforced in 
the word of God, that makes it a government : and it is 
the reception and belief of the doctrines and principles of 
the gospel, and the governing power of its spirit, that 
constitutes the other the Church of God." The Bible, 
and the Bible only," says Chillingworth, " is the religion 
of Protestants." The Bible is the divine charter on 
which the church is founded. These oracles of God be- 
come our confession of faith and our common law. The 
divine right thus secured, is transferred, not as senseless 
heraldry, by will and deed ; but who ever have the Bible, 
embrace its truth, submit to its laws and cherish its spiri- 
tual vitality, inherit its immunities and succeed to the 
honors and powers of the true, Apostolical church. We. 
would ask if any thing else can, by whomsoever confer- 
red ? 

Here is a right borrowed from God ; the succession of 
a spiritual Christianity, which cannot be resolved into 
mere externals, nor secured by seals, rites, symbols, keys, 
any or all of human investments, from which every thing 
vital and spiritual may have fled. Who would look for 
the succession of a Christian church and a spiritual min- 
istry in the hordes of merciless and profligate monks, or in 
the " fox-hunting clergy" of England, and deny it to Bax- 
ter, Cranmer and Bunyan, holy men of God, persecuted 
for righteousness' sake and doing wonders in the name of 
Christ ? We should as soon think of Bonaparte, wasting 
on his ocean rock, and his wandering family as the ruling 
powers of continental Europe, to the rejection of the 
rightful sovereigns, or regard the asphaltic slime pits im- 
mercing the fallen towers and palaces of Babylon, the 
living city of millions. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 97 

We are happy to recognize as Christians, and find our 
fellowship with Leighton, Sherlock and Tillotson, valiant 
for the truth and powerful amid the profligacy of courts : 
or with Massillon and Bourdaloue, rebuking sin on the 
throne. And no less do we rejoice to commune with 
Fenelon in exile persecuted, yet radiant in the charity 
and glory of Christ; with Oberlin warm-hearted amid 
the mountain snows of Switzerland ; with Felix NerT 
on the icy Alps, and with Owen and Doddridge, and 
Pearce and Fuller, and all the humble followers of Christ, 
doing good in his name, and gathering the credentials of 
their office and their spirit from the renewing power of 
God. 

While we admit then a qualified divine right to every 
Christian church and to their ministers acting under the 
great commission, and with those spiritual qualifications, 
which are essential to the functions of their office, we 
must remember, that when these qualifications depart, 
their commission expires, and the ' divine right' passes 
away. And though the name may sound as lofty and its 
ministrations be increasingly splendid and costly, all is 
cold and dead. The shrine may stand beneath the splen- 
did dome and gilded minerets, but the divinity has de- 
parted. The church of Christ and his ministry are not 
here. 

We trust that from this brief and imperfect statement 
of an important argument, we shall not be charged with 
being indifferent to government in the church, any more 
than in the state. We would sbut the avenues against 
an unauthorized ministry, in the one, as resolutely as we 
would resist the assumptions of self-appointed rulers in 
the other. 

We cannot leave this subject without a brief notice of 

9 



98 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, 

the origin of that distinction in the Christian ministry 
which is one of the strongest supports of the principles 
before us. We allow that the Jewish church had her 
rich ceremonial, her temple service imposingly splendid, 
her officials of many grades and her High Priest with 
duties peculiar and powers divinely delegated. That 
this, however, affords support for any peculiar and exclu- 
ecclesiastical organization under the gospel, we have yet 
to learn. This is another dispensation ; and what has it, 
for a priest to do ? Where is the altar at which he shall 
sacrifice ? What are the victims that are to bleed in his 
hands ? Claiming to follow in the footsteps of Christ, 
the High Priest of our profession, the minister at the 
altar must himself become the victim. And claiming 
apostolical succession as to office, we ask, where are 
found the attending credentials of the apostolical com- 
mission ? Where are miracles and inspiration ? and who 
receive the Holy Ghost and speak with tongues, beneath 
even associated prelatical hands ? 

The Gospel never assumed, in any of its forms and 
early services, the ceremonial of the ancient economy. In- 
troduced by its divine Author, it rose wi'h its unassuming 
form and simple spirituality, in the synagogue, rather than 
in the imposing temple service.* And no one can fail to 

* "It appears highly probable," says Bishop Whately, " I might 
say, morally certain, that wherever a Jewish synagogue existed, that 
was brought, the whole or the chief part of it, to embrace the Gos- 
pel, the Apostles did not there so much form a Christian church, (or 
congregation, Ecclesia), as make an existing congregation, Christian" 
Hence this author justly concludes, that we have so little said about 
the ministry and the constitution of church government. These in- 
stitutions had little of novelty, not originating wholly with the Apos- 
tles. The officers of the synagogue became the officers of the 
church, and its simple services were continued, with no great change 
as to externals. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 99 

see how simple, unaffected and unostentatious were the 
ordinary devotions of the synagogue. Tracing the re- 
peated services of the Redeemer with his disciples, and 
the frequent assemblings of his followers, subsequent to 
his ascension, there is found nothing of the imposing cere- 
monial of the Jewish temple service ; no gorgeous vest- 
ments of the ministerial office, and no apparent distinc- 
tion in the powers of the apostles and their immediate 
successors, as the preachers of the Gospel.* They es- 
tablished churches every where, and the ministers of 
these churches were called Bishops or Presbyters. Each 
church had its bishop, and these were generally not as nu- 
merous nor as extensive as the ordinary parishes of city 
and country clergymen at the present day. ■* As for the 
word diocese, I do not remember," says Lord King, " that 
I ever found it used, in this sense, by any of the ancients ; 
but there is another word, which they frequently denomi- 
nated the bishop's cure, and that is parish.^ We read 
of the parishes of Asia, the parish of Ephesus, of Corinth, 
of Athens, and of the parish of Carthage.J So that a 
parish," in the language of Lord King, " is the same as 
a particular church, or a single congregation. § These 
parishes had their respective " bishops or ministers, one 
bishop to a church, and but one church to a bishop." 

* " Whatever a bishop did, the same did a presbyter." " Bishops 
and presbyters were of the same ordrr." " They had one and the 
same name — each being indifferently called bishops or presbyters." 
Clemens Romanus, sustained by Polycarp's exhortation to the Phi- 
lippians, abundantly confirm these opinions. See Lord King : Euseb. 
lib. 5, Cap. 14. p. 193,— Cap. 24, p. 193. 

t Ireneus to Pope Victor, twice speaks of the bishoprics of Asia, as 
parishes. Twv irapo\Ku?v. Euseb. lib. 5, Cap. 14, p. 193. 

t See Euseb. lib. 2, 3 and 4. 

§ See Dissertations of Appollonius against Alexander the Heretic. 



100 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

1. All the people of one diocese, parish or church, met 
together in one place, "where," says Justin Martyr, " the 
bishop preaches and prays." 2. " The bishop had but 
one altar or communion table in his whole diocese, at 
which his whole flock received the sacrament from him," 
" There is but one altar," says Ignatius, " as there is but 
one bishop.* 3. The bishop also baptized all that re- 
ceived this ordinance in his diocese. 4. "The charities 
of the church were deposited with the bishop," as Justin 
Martyr says ; " he was the common curator and over- 
seer of all the orphans, widows, diseased, strangers, im- 
prisoned, and, in a word, of all that were needy and in- 
digent." 5. " All the people of the parish (or diocese) 
were present at church censures, as Origin describes an 
offender, as appearing " before the whole church." 
6. " The offender was not restored without the know- 
ledge and consent of the whole diocese." " They were to 
plead," says Cyprian, "their cause before all the peo- 
ple."! ?• " When the bishop was dead, all the people 
met together in one place to choose a new bishop ;" — 
" by the suffrage of all the brotherhood," says Cyprian. 
De universes fraternitatis suffragio — " by all the brethren 
who were met together in one place for that very end." 
8. " At the ordination of the clergy the whole body of the 
people were present." 9. " Public letters from one 
church to another were read before the whole diocese." 
10 " The whole diocese of the bishop did meet all to- 
gether to manage church affairs." 

What can more strictly correspond with the character, 
limits, and usages of our ordinary parishes, or be more 

* Epist. ad Philad. p. 41. Also Justin Martyr. 

i Acturi causam apud plebera universam. Epist. 10, § 4, p.. 30> 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 101 

unlike the wide territory and multiplied congregations of 
a modern diocesan ? Not only so. but " the real size," 
says Lord King, " of these bishoprics, concerning which 
we have any notices remaining on ancient records, the 
very largest of them were no greater than our particular 
congregations are." 

[ ; This was true of the bishoprics of Smyrna, Ephesus, 
Magnesia, Philadephia, and Trallium. Of this the " Epis- 
tles of Polycarp" may furnish abundant proof. The dio- 
ceses of Antioch, Rome, Carthage and Alexandria, for 
three hundred years after Christ, remained each as a 
single congregation.* The whole region around Rome, 
along the banks of the Tiber, was studded with separate 
parishes or dioceses, each having its distinct bishop, 
whose duties were exclusively confined to a single con- 
gregation. Hundreds of churches as bishoprics, with 
their pastors as bishops, so called, were to be found, here 
arranged, built up and sustained as Christian churches are 
now. Hence, says Cyprian, "bishops were ordained 
throughout all provinces and cities" — Per omnes provin- 
cias, et per urbes singulas ordinati sunt episcopi, (Epist. 
52, § 10, p. 119), and he adds, that he was chosen by his 
own people.f 

In all this we find no archbishops and no popes rising 
to rule with the divine right of an apostolical succession, 
but the beautiful simplicity of the days of Christ and his 
immediate followers in the ministry of mercy to lost 
mankind. 

Having shown that there is no proof that the doctrine 
of " divine right" or of an exclusive " apostolical succes- 

* See Lord King. A. Ed. p. 42. 

t Populi universi suffragio. Epist. 55, p. 139. 



102 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

sion " was ever claimed for the papacy or the prelacy 
during the first three centuries after Christ, we feel au- 
thorised to assert that no authority is obtained from the 
gospel itself. Having seen also, that no distinction was 
known among the clergy during most of this period ; and 
as we shall yet see that no forms of worship or liturgies 
were imposed upon the people and no such peculiar effi- 
cacy attached to ordinances and ceremonies as subse- 
quently appeared ; and being satisfied with the Word of 
God and the authorities adduced, we feel it wholly unne- 
cessary to advert for a moment to the multitude of mystic 
and "juvenile fathers " that crowded the dark ages ; from 
which labyrinth of night, of ignorance and corruption, the 
advocates of every system of error so confidently borrow 
support. Nothing is more uncertain and unsatisfactory 
than that long array of authorities in support of clashing 
systems and sentiments which are summoned from this 
dark abyss ; where " we find council in opposition to 
council; fathers against fathers ; pope against pope ; au- 
thority against authority."* We shall resort there for no 
support to our arguments, nor consent to meet any bor- 
rowed from that source. We prefer to bridge the whole* 
to leave its mystic puerelities, and rest in the light of 
earlier times, till that morning star of the Reformation 
ushers the dawn of another and a brighter day. From 
Wyckliffto Luther the pure light of truth and life every 
hour increases, till the dense night of more than ten long 
centuries is broken, and the morning is fully ushered in. 
Germany, Switzerland and France as if waked at once 
by the same mighty power, burst the chains of delusion 
and welcomed to her suffering sons the liberty of Christ, 

* Rev. Robt. Ferguson, p. 23. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 103 

and rising as from the sleep of sepulchres, reorganize 
and reanimate the church of God. To the enquiry of 
popish and prelatical pride, where was your church be- 
fore Luther came 1 We reply, it was where truth, grace 
and the spirit of God lived and reigned — where the Char' 
ter of the kingdom of heaven was sacred and inviolate. 
Whether in exiled families, chased, crowded, suffering 
amid mountain rocks and eternal snows, or with the 
saints sighing in silence and despair at the abominations 
of cruelty and sin, whose remonstrant successors, came 
forth at last from the bosom of night, that constellation 
of wonders and toils. These were the church, and to the 
church universal the resurrection of life and hope, the joy 
and triumph of a spiritual Christianity. Here was the 
church, and it can be no where else even now. We look 
not to Rome, to Canterbury, nor Geneva, but where "be- 
lievers" meet, rejecting a cold and miserable formalism, 
in love with truth and God, there is our church, our home, 
our rest. There is the ministry of Christ, vital and valid ; 
the Holy Ghost its sanction and heaven its hope. 

But we must briefly trace the rise and progress of th.pt 
new ministerial order and we can merely glance at it and 
refer the reader to history, for the full record of the most 
gigantic structure, ever conceived or reared amid the 
ruins of the apostacy, whose summit, if not reaching hea- 
ven like Babel of old, has its base deep laid as the bot- 
tomless pit. 

"The duties of a bishop," says Lord King, "were 
preaching the word, praying with his people, administer- 
ing the true sacraments ; taking care of the poor, ordain- 
ing of ministers, governing his flock, excommunicating 
offenders, absolving penitents — i. e. preaching, worship 



104 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

and government, were part of the bishop's function and 
office."* 

In an extended congregation it would not be unnatural 
for the minister growing weary under its care or wasting 
with the infirmities of age, to desire some assistance 
in the performance of his arduous duties ; nor for a 
church to become so numerous and extended as to find it 
necessary to branch off into new and separate congre- 
gations. In the church, diocese or parish of Alexandria, 
during the third century, this seems actually to have 
occurred. In the extreme suburbs of the city, says 
Eusebius, distinct congregations (tfwwywyul) began to 
arise, from the remoteness of their residence from the 
usual place of worship ; yet they did not at once sepa- 
rate from " their old church and bishop," but retaining 
this endearing relation, they by permission enjoyed at 
stated seasons the ministrations of others, who from their 
age or circumstances were naturally in many respects 
subordinate, and under the direction of the mother 
church. Here, as far as we can discover, is the modest 
and innocent rise of that collossal system of diocesan and 
pontifical power which like clouds from the bottomless 
pit have overshadowed the earth, making the spiritual 
kingdoms of this world above all its civil powers, and 
blending the spiritual with the earthly, honoring the one, 
to the destruction of the other. 

It is not difficult to see, how unequal endowments, 
age, and maturity of learning and piety, might give to one 
man a commanding influence over many minds. The 
presiding officer of an ecclesiastical assembly, under the 
influence of his station, or the pastor of some popular or 



* See Origen. Tertul : Justin Martyr. Firmilian. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 105 

central church, in the capital of the country, whose an- 
cient and commanding ascendency becomes transferred 
to its minister, soon finds himself unconsciously, perhaps 
against his will, clothed with uncommon powers — stand- 
ing amid his juniors, his sons and admirers, venerable 
for age, learning and piety, he is the patriarch of the 
churches, even of churches whose powers and whose 
ministry are essentially the sa'me. In this way the dis- 
tinctions in the church and the Christian ministry no 
doubt had their rise ; and history has written the results, 
through fifteen hundred years of ecclesiastical corruption, 
clerical pride and oppression. The gorgeous pontifi- 
cate ; the regal prelacy, robed, mitred, and enthroned in 
scarlet, on the seven hills, claiming the mistresship of 
nations and the prelatic empire of the world, are the 
achievements and the memorials. 

History has not left the foregoing positions unsus- 
tained. Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and 
Carthage, had powerful and extended churches within 
their respective borders, to which pride, learning, com- 
merce and wealth had given ascendant powers. Their 
primitive ministry was no more, and their original Chris- 
tian simplicity had passed away : the corruptions of the 
church and of the age had favored the extension and 
abuse of that power with which they were clothed. The 
rivalship existing between these cities, especially the 
most distinguished, became transferred to their respect- 
ive churches, whose spiritual heads were not insensible 
to the honors of an overshadowing influence. 

Whatever may have been the result of the enlarged 
powers of the venerable minister of Alexandria in the 
third century, it was not until the close of the sixth, that 
anything like prelatical or papal jurisdiction and pre-* 



106 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

eminence was known. From the imperial character of 
Rome, or from the ascendant talents of " Gregory the 
Great/' he was acknowledged as holding the first place 
among the patriarchs, yet " with express limitation of 
jurisdiction and bounds." John, the Patriarch of Con- 
stantinople, as yet the " head city," and jealous of the 
imperial aspirings of Rome, became emulous of the as- 
cendant honors and influence of Gregory, and claimed to 
be styled the " universal patriarch' 1 '' or bishop, as the city 
where he officiated was the chief residence of the em- 
peror. Lending the aid of his overshadowing influence 
to the feebler and remote churches, he received that 
homage and gratitude due to beneficent greatness, and 
there was no general resistance to his claim. 

Gregory of Rome, however, remonstrated, and denied 
the right of his brother to such exclusive assumptions : 
" It was Lucifer ; it was antichrist ; it could belong to 
no bishop on earth." So indignantly did the patriarch of 
the imperial city protest ; his wounded pride, doubly 
vigorous from the apparent piety that sanctioned it, that 
the Patriarch of Alexandria, remembering perhaps the oc- 
currences of his own city in the third century and to pacify 
his brother of Rome, bestowed upon him the more mag- 
nificent title of universal pope. But Gregory was too 
modest, or too far committed by his denunciations of this 
honor under another name, and with all humility declares 
himself " the servant of the servants of God :" in mitred 
lips the living synonym of papal power. Gregory was 
pope, the father of that whole race ; imperial in the 
church, as Rome to the world.* 



* See His. of Oath. Chh. by Alexander Petrie, Cap. II. pp. 9-11 
and Campbell's Lectures, Lee. XVI. p. 27L 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 107 

Thus we have the rise of unassuming, patriarchal 
supervision in the third century, growing slowly through 
more than three hundred years into diocesan jurisdic- 
tion : from its civil and geographical relations at length 
assuming prelatical powers, and not even nominally pon- 
tifical and papal till near seven hundred years of corrup- 
tion and darkness obscures the true light. 

We know of nothing apostolical like the foregoing 
rivalship, but that memorable dispute who should be 
greatest ; and all the distinctions in the ministry, papal 
and prelatical, are no more primitive nor apostolical 
than this. 

It is not from prejudice towards any class of men 
that we oppose these high church principles ; but from 
deep conviction of their unscriptural character, and from 
their necessary influence upon those that adopt them. 
This is seen not alone on the page of history. It has its 
memorials in all the archives, institutes and civil organi- 
sations of the world. This influence is seen not alone 
at Rome, and at Canterbury, in the papacy of the Episco- 
pate ; but it is seen also in the Presbyter, and had the 
clamorous demands once made in England by the Pres- 
byterians, for the sword, been heard, we might have seen 
the northern presbyter of Scotch zeal, fresh and firm in 
the remembrance of his national and religious wrongs, 
carrying something more to London than his " confes- 
sion of faith," with his " solemn league and covenant ;" 
and how many a papist and adherent of Episcopacy would 
have found their way to the tower, the fleet and the stake, 
it is not easy to say. The aspect and late doings of 
high Presbytery in another hemisphere, and its proud 
domination at this moment in Scotland, are some indica- 
tions of its energy when unrestrained. And as human 



1^8 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

nature does not vary essentially any where, nor in any 
age, had Cromwell been as vain of his theology, as 
Henry VIII. ; and the Independents long enough in 
power to learn all its blessings, notwithstanding the na- 
ture of their principles, the one might have been a sec- 
ond " defender of the faith," and the other, shorn of their 
unshared excellence, hung with all servility on the arm 
of the Protector. We rejoice that these principles were 
not allowed to begin their work upon these men of scrip- 
tural faith and simple trust in Christ for salvation. We 
would not trust human nature with these principles any 
where. They show themselves most in the papacy and 
the prelacy, because they have there lived so long and 
gathered such encouragement from their civil relations, 
and more so from the very nature of their eclesiastical or- 
ganization. And it is now more in defence of ourselves, 
and of other principles, dearer than life, that the Christian 
citizen as well as the Christian preacher is called to op- 
pose them. 

And let it be remembered that we are not alone in 
these views of entire dissent from the principles before 
us. Those better acquainted with them from experience 
of their disasterous results on the moral and religious in- 
terests of the church, shall give their testimony to the 
truth and reasonableness of our positions. We shall but 
allude to the worthy men of the Episcopal church, who 
are struggling against them in this country and to the 
prelates and the numerous clergy of the English Estab- 
lishment, now so vigorously resisting the Oxford tracta- 
rians. We shall rely chiefly on the opinions of the most 
learned and pious of the English church in past times, 
whose sentiments and authority are held in the highest 
estimation at the present day. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 109 

We repeat it, we are not acting in our sectarian cha- 
racter unsustained by those who better know the princi- 
ples before us, than we do, and who have felt more of 
their influence than we hope ever to experience. We 
appeal to the Episcopal church itself for the truth and 
vindication of every position we have taken, though the 
men we shall adduce for our support, may not have been 
led to consider the political and religious bearings of 
these principles as others may have been compelled 
to do, 

2. In the next place the system under review, is a de- 
parture from the original principles of the Episcopal 
Church of England, as established at the era of the Refor- 
mation. 

In reference to ecclesiastical discipline, no historical 
fact is more certain than this, that all the reformed church- 
es renounced the principle of any divine right of Episco- 
pal ordination. As a single instance, we may mention 
the Smalcaldic Articles, in 1533, which strenuously as- 
sert the identity of bishops and presbyters, and their 
equality by divine right, in the power of ordination. 
These articles were signed by nearly eight thousand 
ministers, among whom were Luther, Melancthon, Bu- 
cer, &c. To a similar effect was the declaration of the 
Function of the English church, about the same period, 
which states as follows : " In the New Testament there 
is no mention of any degree or distinction of orders, but 
only of deacons or ministers, and of priests or bishops."* 
This declaration was signed by thirty-seven distinguished 
civilians and divines, and by thirteen bishops. Nor was 



♦Burnet's Hist, of Ref. I. 321 fol. 
10 



110 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

this subject, as some have insinuated, hastily decided on 
by the English reformers. On the contrary, it was re- 
garded as one of the cardinal questions of the Reforma- 
tion, and was examined by them with great care and de- 
liberation. It was one of a number of queries propound- 
ed to a large council of the most distinguished divines 
and bishops, under Henry VIII. As a specimen of the 
answers which were then given, we transcribe the fol- 
lowing. 

Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, says " The m> 
shops and priests were at one time, and were no two 
things, but both one office, in the beginning of Christ's 
religion." 

Dr. Cox, afterwards bishop of Ely under Elizabeth, 
adds, "By scripture (as Jerome saith) bishops and priests 
be one. Yet bishops as they are now, were after priests t 
and therefore made of priests." 

Dr. Redman, says, " At the beginning, were both one 
— wherefore one made the other indifferently."* 

To a similar effect were the decisions of Dr. Day, Dr. 
Edgeworth, The Bishop of London, and generally of the 
most distinguished friends of the Reformation. Accord- 
ingly, these principles were embodied by the bishops in 
the Necessary Erudition of a Christian Man, which was 
approved by a vote of both houses of Parliament in 1543, 
and prefaced with an epistle by the king himself. In this 
it is declared, that " priests and bishops are by God's law 
one and the same, and that the powers of ordination and ex- 
communication belong equally to loth." These were the 
principles of the English Church during the whole reign 
of Edward VI. Foreign churches were recognized by 

* Burnet I. 223. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. Ill 

the Reformers as in the fullest sense churches of Christ. 
A large number of foreign divines were invited by Cran- 
mer from abroad to aid in the Reformation, and were in- 
stantly employed in clerical duties without one hint of 
re-ordination.* On the restoration of the English church, 
on its present footing, under Elizabeth, it was enacted by 
Parliament " that the ordination of foreign churches 
should be held valid, and that those who had no orders, 
should be of like capacity with others to enjoy any place 
of ministry in England."! That these were the senti- 
ments of the clergy at this time, is most, evident. " The 
first who solemnly appeared in vindication of the English 
hierarchy," says Bishop Stillingfleet, " was archbishop 
"Whifgift, a sage and prudent person, whom we cannot 
suppose ignorant of the sense of the Church of England, 
or afraid or unwilling to defend it. Yet he frequently 
against Cartwright asserts " no form of church govern- 
ment is by the Scriptures prescribed to, or commanded the 
church of God." And so Dr. Cosins his chancellor, " it can- 
not be proved that any certain, particular form of church 
government, is commanded us by the word of God." Dr. 

* Among these was the celebrated John Knox, who was chaplain 
to the king, and was sent also by the privy council to preach at Ber- 
wick, see Strype's Annals III. 235. Martyn Bucer was another, who 
officiated, says Strype, "at St. Martins Cambridge do. do. II. 207. 
At the death of Bucer, a funeral sermon was preached by Parker^ 
afterwards the most active in establishing the church on its present 
footing, as first archbishop under Elizabeth. In this sermon he terms 
Bucer a " chief master workman" placed there by God ; and dwells 
with much feeling on the loss sustained by the church, and on the cer- 
tain happiness to which Bucer had departed. Strype's life of Parker, 
29. How little does all this look like doubting whether the " promises'* 
of the gospel belong to those who are out of the Episcopal church ! 
t Strype as quoted by Neal, l f 336. 



lifc THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

Loe, "no certain form of government is prescribed in the 
word." Bishop Bridges, " God hath not expressed the 
form of church government." " They who are pleased 
but to consult the third book of the learned and judicious 
Mr. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity," adds Stillingfleet, 
11 may see the mutability of church government, largely 
asserted and fully proved."* Iren : Part II. c. viii. § 3. 

The learned Whittaker, professor of divinity in Cam- 
bridge at the same period, and who was chiefly employed 
in the controversy with the papists, declares as the doc- 
trine of the reformed, (in his controversy with Bellarmin 
and Dureus) that "presbyters being by divine right the 
same as bishops, they might warrantably set other presby- 
ters over the churches." It was on this ground, that 
speaking in behalf of the English Church, he defended 
the validity of ordination, as performed by Luther, Zwin- 
gle, Bucer, etc. Little did he or his associates imagine, 
that Protestants would ever unite with Papists, in calling 
that ordination in question. When this was first done by 
Dr. Brancroft, in his sermon at Paul's cross, towards the 
close of Elizabeth's reign, it excited so much surprise 
that Sir Francis Knolls wrote to Dr. John Reynolds one 

*The only attempt which we have ever heard of to evade these 
testimonies, is by saying tha.t " church government" here, may not 
have referred to the different orders of clergy in the church, but mere- 
ly to other ecclesiastical constitutions. But Stillingfleet, with the 
originals before him, did so understand them, and cited them to estab- 
lish his position, that there is no unalterable divine right in the clergy. 
These declarations too, were made against Cartwright the Puritan, 
who asserted the exclusive divine right of preshytcrian ordination. 
Whitgift and the rest therefore, if they spoke to the point in debate, 
meant to deny what Cartwright maintained, viz that the Scriptures 
had laid down any one immutable constitution for the orders of th@ 
clergy, discipline, etc. of the church. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 113 

of the translators of the Bible, and universally regarded 
as the most learned man of the age, for his opinion on 
this subject. Reynolds replied that even Bellermin ac- 
knowledged the weakness of Dr. B's pretension. " It may 
be added" he says " that they who for five hundred years 
have been industrious in reforming the church, have 
thought, that all pastors, whether called bishops or pres- 
byters have according to the word of God like power and 
authority." He then appeals in confirmation of his state- 
ment, to the Waldenses. WicklifF and his followers, Huss 
and his disciples, Luther, Calvin, Brentius, Bullinger and 
Musculus ; to many English bishops as Jewell, author 
with Cranmer of the articles and Homilies, Pilkington 
and others ; and to Bradford, Lambert, and many more of 
the early confessors of the English church. He adds, 
that this was the common doctrine of the reformed church- 
es in Switzerland, Savoy, France, Germany, the Nether- 
lands, Hungary and Poland. It was not until forty years 
after, in the time of Archbishop Laud, that these high 
church principles gained much footing in the English 
church, and even long after that, Stillingfleet says, " It is 
acknowledged by the stoutest champions of episcopacy, 
before these late unhappy divisions, that ordination per- 
formed by presbyters in case of -necessity, is valid ; 
which I have already shown doth evidently prove that 
episcopal government is not founded on any unalterable 
divine right.' 1 ''* 

Authorities from the Church of England might be mul- 
tiplied in unbroken succession to the present time, sus- 
taining the same liberal principles ; and yet nine-tenths 
of the Christian clergy throughout the world are declared 

* Iren. Part II. Chap. VIII. $ 7. 
10* 



114 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

unministerial, their acts invalid, and their countless 
churches excommunicated from the fellowship of Christ, 
Where in the ages of primitive Christianity ; where in 
the whole bright era of the Reformation ; where, in the 
gospel of God, is there authority for such an act of arro- 
gance ! 

We adduce in support of our positions the authority of 
the principal ecclesiastical dignitary of the Episcopal 
Church in Ireland, in whose masterly production we find 
a catholic spirit, and fully conceded all that other Chris- 
tian denominations ask. This work alone ought to settle 
the subject in debate forever. 

Dr. Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, writes as follows : 
" It appears plainly from the sacred narrative, that though 
the many churches which the apostles founded were 
branches of one spiritual brotherhood, of which the Lord 
Jesus Christ is the heavenly head, though there was one 
Lord, one faith, one baptism, for all of them, yet they 
were each a distinct, independent community on earth, 
united by the common principles on which they were 
founded, and by their mutual agreement, affection and 
respect, but not having any one recognized head on 
earth. He says, it seems to have been, at least the 
general, if not the universal practice of the apostles, to 
appoint over each separate church a single individual as 
a chief governor, under the title of angel or bishop. A 
church and diocese seem to have been for a considerable 
time coextensive and identical, and each church or dio- 
cese though connected with the rest, by ties of faith, 
hope and charity, seem to have been perfectly inde- 
pendent as far as it regards any power or control." He 
speaks of distinct and independent communities, each gov- 
erned by its own single bishop as our independent churches 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 115 

are now ; confirming the fact already alluded to, that the 
limits of a primitive bishopric on the banks of the Tiber, 
were not ordinarily more extensive than the congrega- 
tions of our American clergy generally. 

Speaking of those who " claim to have what is called 
apostolical succession," he says, " they seem to me, in 
proportion as they proceed on these principles, to be in 
some degree removing our institutions from a foundation 
on a rock to place them on sands." Having decidedly 
condemned the " claims of ministers on some supposed 
sacramental virtue, transmitted from hand to hand in 
unbroken succession from the apostles," he adds, " those 
who are not satisfied with the foundations thus laid, and 
which is the very foundation which Christ and his apos- 
tles have prepared for us ; who seek to take higher 
ground, as the phrase is, and maintain what are called 
according to the modern fashion, ' church principles, or 
Church of England principles,' are in fact subverting the 
principles both of our church in particular, and of every 
Christian church that claims the inherent right belonging 
to a community, and confirmed by the sanction of God's 
word, as contained in the Holy Scriptures. It is advan- 
cing, but not in the right road. It is advancing not in a 
sound learning but error ; not in faith but in a super- 
stitious credulity, to seek for some higher and better 
ground on which to rest our doctrines and institutions, 
than that on which they are placed by the Author and 
Finisher of our faith." He says in a note to this, " It is 
curious to observe how very common it is for any sect or 
party to assume a title indicative of the very excellence 
in which they are especially deficient, or strongly con- 
demnatory of the very errors with which they are espe- 
cially chargeable. The phrase Catholic religion, i. e. 



116 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

universal, is the most commonly in the mouths of those 
who are the most limited and exclusive in their views, 
and who seek to shut out the largest number of Christian 
communities from the go«pel covenant." Speaking of 
appeals to antiquity in support of claims to the divine 
right of succession, he says, " Everything pertaining to 
this appeal is obscure, uncertain, disputable, and actually 
disputed to such a degree, that even those who are not 
able to read the original authors may yet be perfectly 
competent to judge how unstable a foundation they fur- 
nish. The tendency of this procedure is to drive the 
doubting into confirmed though perhaps secret infidelity, 
and to fill with doubts the sincerely pious." We fully 
agree with the archbishop, and find a result more fatal 
still. This obscurity and absurdity of claims and suc- 
cession, united with undefinable securities of grace by 
mere ordinances, have driven men of intelligence to 
avowed infidelity, and the credulous to fanaticism, till the 
working of miracles is actually attempted in the name of 
Christ. And even the churchmen of Oxford begin boldly 
to justify faith in the popish pretensions to this power.* 

* A volume has recently been -published at Oxford containing a 
revised translation of a portion of Fleury's Ecclesiastical History, 
viz. from A. D. 381, to A. D. 400: introduced by an advertisement 
from the pen of the Rev. J. H. Newman, Fellow of Oriel College. 
Prefixed to the work is a labored " Essay on the Ecclesiastical Mir- 
acles ;" that is, those miracles recorded as having been wrought in 
the early centuries of the church posterior to the apostolical age. 
The writer takes the ground (p. xiii) that, these " are not to be at once 
rejected "— " that some of them were true miracles ;" and "that we 
cannot be certain how many were not true. After treating of " tho 
anticedent probability " of these miracles, their "internal character" 
and " the state of the argument " respecting them, the writer goes on 
and "sets down the evidence for and against certain miracles as we 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 117 

They affirm, that, "In the sacraments we have, in some 
special sense, the present power of God with us, and the 
episcopal and priestly succession have in them some- 
thing divine, as channels, which convey, as it were, his 
presence to us ;" and that, " if Balaam's ass instructed 
Balaam, what is there fairly to startle us in the church's 
doctrine, that the water of baptism cleanses from sin, or 
that eating the consecrated bread is eating Christ's body." 
They say, this power is " constantly conveyed through 

meet with them." But the evidence for them, in his mind, far out- 
weighs the evidence against them, and in behalf of these at least, he 
makes the assertion (p. cix) " that it will be found that the greater 
part of the miracles of Revelation are as little evidence for revela- 
tion at this day, as the miracles of the church are evidence for the 
church." The miracles which he thus sustains are the nine follow- 
ing : 1. The Thundering Legion. 2. The change of water into oil 
by Narcissus of Jerusalem. 3. Miracles wrought on the course of 
the river Lycus by Gregory Thaumaturgus.. 4. Constantine's Lu- 
minous Cross. 5. The discovery of the Holy Cross by Helena. 
6. The death of Arius. 7. The fiery eruption on Julian's attempt to 
rebuild, the Jewish Temple. 8. The recovery of the blind man by 
relics at Milan. 9. The miracle upon the African confessors muti- 
lated by Heneric. That miraculous power is actually claimed for 
the ministry Episcopally ordained, see Tracts for the Times, No, 
lxxxv. p. 95. 

A recent discourse from the prelate of the Episcopal church in 
Maryland, on the " Christian Priesthood," speaks of" the ministerial 
intervention, that sins may be forgiven,'''' and affirms, that in this re- 
spect, it is more clearly claimed and efficient than in a former dispen- 
sation. What Mr. Withingham makes of the sacrifice of Christ, and 
what advantage that gives us, over the Jew of old, is not known. The 
whole discourse is worthy of attention, only as another indication of 
the result to which the principles before us lead. Its affinities cannot 
be mistaken, and we are not surprised, that some of the clergy of 
Maryland revolt from its conclusions. See the Rev. Mr. John's 
Reply. 



118 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

the hands of commissioned persons, authorized according 
to the outward forms of the church — that the sacra- 
ments are a continued miracle 1 " and their "dispensation 
by episcopally ordained ministers is equal to the working 
of miracles — and if baptism be the cleansiug and quick- 
ening of the dead soul, to say nothing of the Lord's sup- 
per, THEY DO WORK MIRACLES." 

It would appear, that, by design, every thing had been 
omitted in the gospel, by which we might construct an 
ecclesiastical polity, and pronounce it divine, or even 
scriptural, to the exclusion of all other religious associa- 
tions. The most we can confidently say of any is, that 
it is not unscriptural or forbidden. Of none can we af- 
firm, this is after the pattern seen in the mount or at Je- 
rusalem. From what we know of the assumptions and 
claims of orders and polity, pretending to divine right and 
exclusive scriptural authority, we see the wisdom of this 
omission. 

The Redeemer foresaw, that any settled and express 
church organization and service, suited to all ages and 
circumstances, which must, at the best, be but the outer 
temple, the forms and orderings of external devotion, 
rather than the vital principle of godliness, would become 
perverted and abused ; and he well knew that men, find- 
ing it easier to observe forms than to cultivate principles ; 
to trust in externals rather than govern the inner man, 
would transfer their minds from the hidden spirit of holi- 
ness, to its external symbols ; and that, instead of se- 
curing and honoring the life of Christ in the soul, they 
would satisfy the demands of an easy and ruinous religion, 
by a superstitious adherence to its formulas and rites, 
And this is lamentably true, even now, with all the un- 
certainties as to ecclesiastical order and services. How 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 119 

much more so, could we settle from the gospel, exactly, 
what was the divinely ordered style of the primitive 
churches, and what their services. As it is, the human 
mind is ever wandering from the substance and the prin- 
ciple of godliness, and magnifying the importance of rites, 
and contending for the mere externals of religion. H&rct 
in Uteris, h&ret in cortice. We hear much about the 
mode of baptism, and little about the vital energy of God 
in the soul. Much of baptismal regeneration, and little 
of the renewing and indwelling of the Holy Ghost. More 
about the commission of Christ and valid ministrations, 
than of justification by faith, and Christ formed in the soul, 
the hope of glory. The ordinances of the gospel, and 
what the church has added thereto, are like essential veri- 
ties, while the gospel itself, with its foundations of hope, 
repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus 
Christ, is almost lost, but as an unseen support to the 
costly and cumbersome ceremonial that is bound, as a 
body of death, upon it, till its very ministers will carry 
their formulas, their discipline and prayer books, where 
they have never thought to leave a Bible. 

The apostle, it would seem, early met these difficulties, 
and severely rebuked them. To the Corinthians, con- 
tending about men and ministrations, he says, I thank 
God I baptized none of you ; for Christ sent me not to 
baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with the wisdom of 
words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none 
effect. 

We say, there was profound wisdom in leaving the 
question of ecclesiastical order and forms so uncertain, 
and throwing men upon the resources of enlightened rea- 
son and intelligent piety. And we may rest assured, that 
when we contend for mere externals, we have lost the 



120 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

unction of religion, and are fighting our own battles, and 
not, as the church militant, for Christ and his cause. 

As we revert to the times of Isaiah, by whom God re- 
bukes the formalism of Israel, saying, To what purpose 
is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? Bring no 
more vain oblations ; when ye spread forth your hands I 
will hide mine eyes from you, yea, when ye make many 
prayers, I will not hear you ; or when, in later days, we 
hear the Saviour condemn the external and heartless ser- 
vice of the Jews, even to their prayers and offerings of 
professed piety, who can trust for a moment in forms and 
ceremonies ? And as we admire the modest carriage 
and unadorned simplicity of the Son of God, of his dis- 
ciples and the learned Paul, mighty in truth, majestic in 
holiness, and unaided by adventitious adornments ; who 
would expect that the cumbersome ceremonial, liturgic 
formalism, and complicated ministry, which, amid grow- 
ing corruptions and midnight darkness, rose to the ma- 
jesty of imperial Romanism and prelatical domination, 
could claim the exclusive sanction and support of the 
word of God ? 

In the primitive, as well as in the apostolical churches, 
there was a beautiful and impressive simplicity, like the 
gospel itself, addressed to the understanding and the heart. 
" The minister," says Cyprian, " offered prayer with a mo- 
dest and a bashful voice." Modestis precibus orare. " He 
so prayed as did most affect the people, whose mouth he 
was to God ; for they did not vocally join with him in 
prayers, but only testified their assent to what the minis- 
ter prayed by saying, Amen." After speaking of the 
Lord's prayer, Tertullian says, " That we may add there- 
unto and offer up prayers unto God, according to the va- 
riety of our circumstances and condition." "Now these 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 121 

other prayers," says Lord King, " which made up a great 
part of divine service, were not stinted and imposed 
forms, but the words and expressions of them were left to 
the prudence, choice and judgment of any particular 
bishop or minister." " I say," adds the same anthor, 
" that the words or expressions of the prayers are not 
enforced or prescribed, but every one that officiated, de- 
livered himself in such terms as best pleased him, and 
varied his petitions according to present circumstances 
and emergencies ; or, if it be more intelligible, that the 
primitive churches had no stinted liturgies, or imposed 
forms of prayer." " There is not the least mention of 
them in any of the primitive writings, nor the least word 
or syllable tending thereunto, that I can find."* Even 
when standing at the sacramental table, the minister or 
" bishop sent up his prayers and praises," says Justin 
Martyr, " according to his ability, otfyj S6va[ug." With these 
simple and hearty ministrations, the people stood, with 
eyes closed and hands lifted to the skies, responding 
simply, as their pastor closed their Amen, so let it be. 

We admire, we venerate the simplicity of the gospel, 
its spiritual, " direct, symmetrical character." We love the 
unadorned modesty of its services and servants, and find 
it, when unaided by human devices, the most impressive 



* See Lord King, on the Primitive Church, Part II. Chap. II. 
Also Cyprian, De Orat. Domini, p. 309. Tertul. Apolog. Cap. 30. 
p. 703. Cyprian, Epist 16, § 1, p. 44. Epist. 58, <$> 2, p. 163. Epist. 
60, $ 4, p. 167. " Baronius ad An. Christi 58, num. 102-104 — 
treating expressly of the public prayers of the ancient Christians, is 
wholly silent as to the use of any forms amongst them." In the fifth 
century, we find an African council deciding as to what prayers shall 
not be used at the Eucharist, at which time, it would appear, that 
there were no prescribed liturgies for general use. 
11 



122 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, 

and efficient. The honors of state and the powers of the 
civil arm have only clouded its beauty, encumbered and 
enervated. Living as we do, where mind and merit are 
not measured by " ribbons " and " garters ;" where office 
and station are not symbolized by stars, empty heraldry 
and proud armorials, we leave to others all such badges 
and emblazonments, incongruous with our government, our 
society and the gospel. All their correspondencies and 
counterparts in church arrangements, we wholly decline, 
not as unessential simply, but as positively unauthorised 
and hurtful. 

God gave us but a solitary holy day, and Jesus Christ 
has left but a single prayer and two simple ordinances ; 
and even these few institutions have been perverted, ob- 
scured and desecrated by human auxiliaries and additions, 
till feasts, fasts and saint's-days, Christ's-masses, Mi- 
chael's-masses, Candlemas and Childermas, with almost 
countless festivals, are crowding the calendar, like stars 
in the firmament of pagan deities, to the supplanting of 
the spiritual and true worship of God. 

One day of rest is lost amid a multitude equally sacred, 
if not more impressive by the infrequency of their recur- 
rence.* One prayer has become a thousand, all solemnly 
enforced ; ihe simple ordinance of baptism actual regen- 
eration ; and the Lord's Supper, when rightly adminis- 
tered, saving to the soul ; and added thereto are confes- 

* Not less than one hundred and twenty of these are retained in 
the Episcopal church ; as says an American prelate: "The church 
has marked the calendar of her seasons, by the coming and going of 
festivals and holy-days." These are acknowledged to be without 
Scripture authority, partly of Jewish and partly of pagan origin, and 
most of them introduced to the church between the fifth and thirteenth 
centuries. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 123 

sionals, confirmations, absolution and extreme unction, 
with all the purchases of penance, forms and prayers, till 
the saving benefits of an exclusive ministry are every 
where forced upon us, and " we have yet to learn," says 
an American prelate, " where a promise to fallen man is 
to be found, that is not limited on the previous condition, 
that he is a member of the visible — i. e. the Episcopal 
church upon earth." 

If the few and simple institutions of the gospel have 
been so perverted, what would be the result if we had 
apostolical usage for all these appended devices ! There 
was more than wisdom in leaving the gospel so simple, 
and its religious forms so few. There was positive in- 
spiration in the omission of unessential usages, as there 
was in recording of essential verities, ajid enjoining of 
specific ordinances. 

We know these humanly devised forms of religion, 
are justified and enforced for the edification and spiritual 
improvement of the church ; but has not Christ made 
ample provision for this, without a liturgy and attending 
formulas ? In adopting these, without his authority, may 
we not supercede his own methods of grace ; and while 
clinging to a righteousness of our own, forfeit the benefit 
of His ? 

Nothing can be more clear, than that all forms of 
prayer and prescribed methods of worship, were utterly 
unknown, for three hundred years after Christ. The ex- 
press declaration of some of the most ancient writers, 
that liturgies were not used, and the utter silence of all, 
as to any such usages of the church, are conclusive on 
this subject. 

" In the course of time, when Christianity was pro- 
tected and even adopted by the state, and opportunity was 



124 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

thus given of establishing public forms and ceremonies of 
worship without fear of danger, and when it seemed ex- 
pedient to recommend it to the favor of half-converted pa- 
gans by outward pomp and circumstance, it was thought 
to be at once safe and seasonable, to increase the number 
of sacred solemnities, — to restore many parts of the Jew- 
ish ritual, and even to incorporate into the system of 
Christian worship various rites and ceremonies from the 
customs of the declining pagan superstition."* 

The precise time, however, when forms began to be 
used is unknown. They were born in darkness, and none 
have survived, to write their genealogy. It is probable, 
that they came into use, almost imperceptibly, from the ne- 
cessities of unqualified ministers. Form after form was ad- 
ded, till in process of time the towering liturgies of the 
papacy were perfected, whence sprung the more refined 
selections of the English Episcopal prayer-book. Little 
did the ignorant preacher of the fourth century dream, that 
the brief creations of his professional necessity, would 
terminate in such results ; and that no Christian could 
pray in his family, and scarcely in his closet, without the 
terms of his petition being dictated by the pleasure of his 
diocesan ; that prayer meetings were to be dissolved at 
his pleasure, and a nation bowing under the bereave- 
ments of God, would be compelled to wait the oracular 
announcement of its spiritual head, before it could recog- 
nize the providence, or pray for its improvement. Form- 
alism is now carried to the mercy-seat, where, at all 
times, the pulsations of the pious soul should beat warm, 
natural and free, like the breathings of the heart of filial 
love, into the bosom of eternal tenderness. We would no 

* Coleman's Antiquities, p. 443. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 125 

more attempt to define and dictate the universal language 
of prayer, thanksgiving and praise, than prescribe to the 
child, in its mother's arms, the language of its wants or 
the breathings of its love, and till then, deny the reality 
of the one, or refuse the claims of the other.* 

The necessary influence of forms in religion when ele- 
vated above their place, should be jealously watched, or 
the spirit of religion will soon die. The Jew, as he lost 
the vital principle of piety, abandoned the precepts of 
a scriptural religion, and soon forfeited the securities 
of his national existence, and instead of Jerusalem, its 
temple, and Judea, with its king and conquering armies, 
we find Israel in Babylon, and the Roman soldier the 
sentinel of the holy city. 

And where did the apostacy of the Jew begin ? It be- 
gan where he substituted the forms of religion for its spi- 
rit ; and attended more to his ecclesiastical polity and his 
temple service, than to the essential truths of the Scrip- 
tures, and thought more of his high priest and his sacri- 
fice, than of God and his Messiah. He suddenly became 
so idolatrous of externals and forms of devotion, that he 
lost entirely the spirit of piety, and became the son of 

* The whole subject of forms and liturgies, as far as their support 
is derived from the gospel and the primitive churches, may be easily 
settled. 1. "Nothing is more clear," says Dr. Owen, "than that 
they are destitute of any plea or pretence from Scripture or antiquity." 
They were unknown in the three first centuries. 2. "No account 
is given," says Archbishop Whately, " of the precise method of 
church service, or even of any regular forms of prayer beyond the 
Lord's prayer. 3. They were wholly of human device and imposi- 
tion coming into the churches by degrees, after the third century, and 
originating, no doubt, from the peculiar necesisties of the clergy of 
that period. See Dr. Owen on Liturgies, Lord King, Tertullian and 
Cyprian. 

11* 



126 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

Abram, and an heir of God, by the simple badge of an He- 
brew. His one rite was as much to him as " authorized 
baptism" or " immersion" can be to any one now. At 
length, he is so religious that Sibboleth is no longer 
Shibboleth, and instead of the weightier matters of the 
law, he tithes his annise and his cummin, and thanks 
God that he is not as other men. 

And for what does all this prepare him ? For careful 
attention to his soul : for faith in his promised Messiah ? 
No. He was confident in the safety of the one, because 
he was a circumcised Hebrew ; and though looking, in 
the pride of his birthright, for his promised Deliverer, when 
he came, he was without the mitre or the sceptre ; and 
the Jew, instead of adoring his Deity, is mortified at his 
humble simplicity, and enters upon the crucifixion of the 
Son of God. He had so long been the victim and the 
worshipper of rites and ceremonies, that he had wholly 
lost the idea of their import. He saw God, not so much 
in the Shekinah, as in the gilded wing of the cherubim. 
He found no such faith in the Messiah of the prophets, 
as in the philactary and sackcloth, and when Christ came, 
the Deity, to him, was not there. 

If such was the result of a divinely ordered system of 
rites, ceremonies and forms, when perverted, what must 
be the result of that system, which without divine au- 
thority for its support, comes into the place of a simple 
and spiritual economy, and which proffers salvation only 
upon faith in the Redeemer 1 To see the only symbols 
of this economy, baptism and the Lord's Supper, lifted 
wholly out of their place, the Holy Ghost separated from 
the one, and Christ from the other, so that neither are 
valid or of virtue, but from the human hand that adminis- 
ters them : we say to see this, with the superadded de- 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 127 

vices of fallible men, pushed into the place of the ex- 
pressed conditions of salvation, must be as fatal to the 
ends of the gospel, as it is foreign to the delegated rights 
of man. And we wonder not at all, that as Paul early- 
met the natural influences of trusting in such perverted 
ordinances, he said, I rejoice that I baptised none of you. 

3. This leads us, to extend this discussion, and to con- 
sider the influence of the principles under review, on the 
more important question of evangelical piety ; in other 
words, how these principles affect the subject of practical 
godliness. 

We have spoken of a class of religious opinions, 
which, in the time of the Reformation, during the perse- 
cution in England, and through our own revolution, 
worked out the principles of civil and religious liberty. 
These same opinions lie at the basis of all practical piety. 
In other words they are essential, as the ultimate facts of 
the gospel, to the renewal, the living piety and final sal- 
vation of men. And this, though advancing beyond the 
ordinary morality of life, is not remote from the subject 
of human government, or the best interests of civil soci- 
ety. For it is only, as the principles of a spiritual reli- 
gion are kept alive, that any inferior interests are safe. 
Common morality in the world, lives only as experimen- 
tal and vital piety lives in the church. Here is the light 
of the world and the salt of the earth, and if the salt have 
lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted ? And if the 
light be darkness, how great is the darkness ? 

Though advancing somewhat beyond the bounds of our 
civil relations, when we remember what these owe to 
their religious associations, and that they are secure, 
only as men are wise and holy, we shall not be found to 
exceed the limits which belong to us, as christian citizens. 



128 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

And more than this, a christian citizen is such, not for the 
earthly state merely, but he is such, for the higher and 
eternal citizenship of the kingdom of God. "Whatever 
then tends to vitiate his faith or his spiritual hopes, 
whether of good here or hereafter, belongs to his com- 
monwealth. 

Having already alluded to a particular class of religious 
sentiments, and coming to their immediate bearing on the 
questions of personal piety and salvation, it becomes ne- 
cessary to state more fully, what some of these religious 
sentiments are, and what the relations they hold. As we 
have found the high church system opposed to our free 
institutions, so we shall find it, if we mistake not, equally 
opposed to that evangelical faith, which is uniformly 
friendly to free institutions. 

In examining the history of the church in past ages, 
we find but two grand divisions, in respect to the mo- 
mentous subject of man's salvation. Before the Refor- 
mation, these divisions consisted of those who held to 
justification through the merits of Christ alone, and those 
who mingled with the doctrines of grace, ecclesiastical 
observances, as sharing in the work of securing our 
acceptance with God. The Waldenses and the Lollards 
once composed the former, and the countless hosts of 
the papacy, the latter. Since the Reformation, when 
Protestantism arose to the partial extinction of the papal 
order, this same distinction has appeared, more gen- 
erally, under the denomination of Calvinists and Armi- 
nians. Not that all who belong to the former class sub- 
scribe to every sentiment of Calvin, or that the great 
body of the latter class, have confined themselves within 
the limits prescribed by the cautious policy of Arminius. 
The fundamental principles of a system are one thing, 



THE CHRISTIAN CItTzEN. 129 

the mode of defending them is quite another. With the 
progress of biblical criticism and mental philosophy, the 
controversy has repeatedly changed its aspect on minor 
points. But the great and fundamental difference be- 
tween the friends and the enemies of the doctrines of 
grace remains unchanged. The former believe in the 
utter alienation of the human heart from God, and its 
entire destitution of holiness, in a state of nature : the 
latter reject this doctrine with indignation, and maintain 
that a portion of divine influence is imparted to each 
individual of our race to restore his •' lapsed powers," 
which principle of grace, as they term it, will under the 
cultivation of human effort and church ordinances ripen 
into the maturity of holiness, and secure eternal life. 
The former consider God's choice of men to eternal life, 
as a choice to make certain individuals holy or believers, 
and thus to prepare them for heaven : the latter contend 
that this choice or determination results solely from 
God's foreseeing, that these individuals will be holy or 
believers, and that his gracious purposes are dependent 
on this contingency. The former hold, that spiritual 
regeneration is the result of a special operation of tho 
Holy Spirit : the latter ascribe this change to the ordi- 
nary influence of that divine a«ent. enjoyed in equal 
degrees by all, and made effectual, whenever it becomes 
so, by the choice of the individual to yield to that influ- 
ence — thus securing the favorite point, that it is the man 
himself, and not God, " who maketh us to differ." 

In no part of Christendom has the contest between the 
friends and enemies of the doctrines of grace, been main- 
tained with more spirit and determination, than in the 
Church of England. But from the time of Charles II. to 
the latter part of the last century, the doctrines of the 



130 THE ^CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

loosest Arminianism were generally prevalent in that 
communion, owing to the low state of public morals, the 
deadening influence of a religious establishment, and the 
natural tendencies, of the human heart. Connected with 
these doctrines in the English Church, we usually find 
high church principles asserting some peculiar and 
mysterious efficacy in ordinances performed by an Epis- 
copal ministry. The infant presented for baptism, is 
instantly "born again in this regenerating ordinance," — 
is translated from a state of nature into a state of grace, 
and obtains a title to the influences of the Holy Spirit 
and the forgiveness of sins."* In the sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper the communicant is brought near to his 
Savior, in a manner which no ardor of love, nor aspira- 
tions of faith, could in themselves secure. According to 
these principles, too, where there is no prelatical bishop, 
there is nothing which can be acknowledged as a 
Church of Christ, and no covenant or promise known to 
exist, of eternal life. The simple want of subjection to 
a prelatical priesthood, turns men over to the uncove- 
nanted mercies of the heathen, with the accumulated 
guilt of rejecting the means which God has himself 
appointed for their salvation. The followers of the late 



* Grant, the high church historian, states the doctrine thus : — 
" This opinion supposes a charm, a secret virtue, by which, to state 
an extreme case, a vicious minister of the Church of England can confer 
something necessary to salvation, as a sacrament is, while the same 
office performed by a pious sectary, who has in his heart devoted 
himself to God, is an absolute nullity." Yet, strange as it may 
seem, after stating the case thus strongly in the form of an objection, 
he declares that the fact is so. " Truth is sacred and immutable, 
and must be received, whatever inconveniences attend its reception." 
—Grant's English Church, Vol. II. p. 7—8. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 131 

Dr. Hobatt unite with that gentleman, who says that 
" None can possess authority to administer the sacra- 
ments, but those who have received a commission from 
the bishops of the (Episcopal) Church" — that "great is 
the guilt, and imminent the danger of those, who negli- 
gently or wilfully continue in a state of separation from 
the authorized ministrations of the church, and participate 
of ordinances administered by an irregular and invalid 
authority ; wilfully rending the peace and unity of the 
church, by separating from the administration of its 
authorized priesthood ; obstinately contemning the means 
which God has prescribed for their salvation. They are 
guilty of rebellion against the Almighty Lawgiver and 
Judge : they expose themselves to the awful displeasure 
of that Almighty Jehovah, who will not suffer his institu- 
tions to be contemned, or his authority violated with 
impunity."* Some high churchmen there are indeed, 
who do not go the full length of these statements. They 
do not positively unchurch all other denominations ; they 
only do it negatively. They will not admit any church 
but their own to exist. They see no reason whatever to 



* Companion for the Altar, edition of 1814, pp. 198 — 200, 203— 
204. Since this article was written, we have looked into the last 
edition of this work, and find that some of these expressions have 
been altered in a manner to strike the mind less offensively, but no 
one, we suppose, will contend that Dr. Hobart ever changed his sen- 
timents on this subject. We have here the plain exposition of his 
views always maintained by him, and as now maintained by his fol- 
lowers ; and we are therefore fully authorized to appeal to the state- 
ments quoted above. If there were reason to believe that in soften- 
ing or generalizing the expressions, Dr. Hobart meant to give up any 
part of the ground taken, the case would be different. But this, we 
presume, no one will say. 



132 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

admit any other. They " are yet to learn" in the words of 
Bishop Ravenscroft, " where a promise to fallen man is 
to be found, that is not limited on the previous condition, 
that he be a member of the visible (Episcopal) Church 
on earth." Now this negative exclusion — this refusal 
to acknowledge any other communion as a Church of 
Christ — though not so presumptuous or offensive as the 
positive declarations of bolder men, amounts to precisely 
the same thing in all its practical results. He who sees 
no authority for the rites of other denominations, must 
act as if there ^were none ; and in a matter which he 
deems of so much importance, must use all his endeavors 
to make others act so likewise. Indeed, with the final 
and perfect revelation of God's will in our hands, to say 
we see no authority for any church ordinances but our 
own, and we are yet to learn where any promise is made 
except to those of our communion — what is it but to say 
in more modest terms, " we do believe there is none ?" 
To make any nice distinctions between wn-belief and 
cZw-belief, in such a case, does seem to us extremely 
idle. It is a subject on which the Scriptures are very 
far from being silent, on which all antiquity, if we may 
credit high churchmen, has spoken in the most decisive 
manner ; and if with all these means of knowledge we 
are yet to learn where any covenant or promise for fallen 
man can be found, except within the boundaries of a 
single church, it is vain to hope that a coming eternity 
will disclose anything but unmingled wrath, for those 
who, under all this light, have rejected the most sacred 
institutions of their Maker. Here, in a condition worse, 
we apprehend, than that of the heathen, the high church- 
man leaves thousands of Protestant churches, which 
have been walking in faith and love from the time of the 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 133 

Reformation to .the present hour ; while the Church of 
Rome, that mother of abominations, is freely recognized 
as a part of Christ's mystical body, a pillar in the temple 
of the living God.* And so great is the importance 
attached to these sentiments, that candidates for the 
ministry, as well in this country as in England, have 
actually been held back from ordination, for venturing to 
express the contrary opinion. 

Far be it from us to intimate, however, that such are 
universally the sentiments of Episcopalians. The church 
of England, our readers are aware, has witnessed a gra- 
dual revival of religion, within the last forty years. A- 
mong the most active promoters of this revival, were the 
two Milners, Dr. Scott, Mr. Wilberforce, Mrs. H. Moore, 
Mr. Gisborne, Mr. Legh Richmond, and the great body 
of writers who were associated in support of the Chris- 
tian Observer. To these persons, under God, the Eng- 
lish church is indebted for nearly all the spiritual religion, 
which now exists within her communion ; and for the 
share she has taken in the noble efforts of Christian be- 
nevolence. Actuated by such a spirit, it was impossible 
for them to lay any stress on outward rites and ordinan- 
ces, as constituting an important part in a title to eternal 
life. 

* " I do believe the Church of Rome," says Archbishop Laud, " to 
be a true church. Were she not a true church, it were hard for the 
Church of England, since from her the English bishops derive their 
apostolic succession." " It is obvious from our acknowledging as 
valid the orders~of its (the Roman Catholic Church) apostate clergy, 
.that we have a still stronger affinity towards that church, than to 
other bodies of professing- Christians, who hold a doctrine nearly as 
pure as our own; thus making the form, rather than the faith, the 
constituent and vital principle of a church. Such is admitted by 
Grant, to be the high church sentiments. Vol. II. p. 7. 
12 



134 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, 

They were, indeed, strongly attached to their own 
modes of worship ; and all were naturally desirous, that 
spiritual religion should be revived, not by the progress 
of dissent, but by restoring a decayed establishment to 
its earlier and better principles. With these views, 
while they labored to promote the cause of evangelical 
religion in their own church, they extended the hand of 
Christian fellowship and affection to the pious of every 
communion. * Mr. Gisborne for example, totally dis- 
claims the jure divino principle : affirming that the apostles 
" left no command which rendered episcopacy universal- 
ly indispensable in future ages." In like manner, the 
Christian Observer, (speaking undoubtedly for those of 
its own sentiments,) says, " Episcopalians found not 
the merits of their cause on any express injunction or 
delineation of church government in the Scriptures, for 
there is none." Vol. III. page 155. 

It is equally certain, that Arminian principles > which 
are now commonly associated with High Church preten- 
sions, were a total departure from the original doctrine of 
the English Church. In the year 1595, these principles 
were first preached in the University of Cambridge, by 



* The Rev. Legh Richmond, an Episcopalian, computes the nu- 
merical hierarchy of the English establishment at 18,000 : "of these, 
Mr. Richmond deliberately supposes, that there are perhaps 1,600 
truly pious men." This is thought by some " a too liberal allowance." 
See Dr. Cox, Theopneuston, p. 123. Further light may be gained 
upon the present state of the English church, and the prospects of 
Protestant piety in Great Britain, by referring to the Letter of the 
Rev. C. P. Golightly. The Record of February last, and Bicker- 
stith's remarks on the Dangers of the Church of Christ, p. 17, who 
says, " it is high time for those who love Protestant truth to speak 
distinctly." 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 133 

William Barret, fellow of Gonville and Caius College. 
So great was the offense given by his sermon to the 
heads of the colleges, that they resorted to measures of 
great severity on the subject. In reporting their proceed- 
ings to the Chancellor of the University, they say, " This 
sermon being so offensive to the church, and so strongly 
savoring of the leaven of popery, and contrary to the doc- 
trine, nature, quality, and condition of faith, as set forth 
in the articles of religion, and homilies appointed to be 
read in churches, and that hath been taught ever since her 
Majesty's reign, in sermons, and defended in public schools* 
and open commencements, without contradiction in the 
universities ; we thought it meet to repress these novelties 
of doctrine by such means as our statutes do appoint." 
They then proceed to state the crime of Barret, viz. his 
"impudent challenging of Calvin, Beza, Peter Martyr, 
Zanchius, and others, of error in the doctrines of faith, in 
most bitter terms, whom we never knew in our church here 
tofore, touched in that matter.'''' They therefore required 
of Barret a public recantation ; which was accordingly 
made in St. Mary's church, Cambridge. He revoked 
what he had preached there, ad clerum, according to the 
sense, which was afterwards called Arminianism, about 
faith, predestination, perseverance, &c. — And added, " I 
do beseech you to pardon this my rashness ; also that I 
uttered many bitter words against Peter Martyr, Theo- 
dore Beza, Jerome Zanchius, Francis Junius, and the res 1 
of the same religion, being the lights and ornaments of our 
churchJ" 

Nor is it wonderful that these novelties produced so much 
excitement ; for, " during this reign, the Institutes of Cal- 
vin," says Stapleton, " were so generally esteemed in 
England, that the book hath been accurately translated 



136 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

into English, and even fixed in the parish churches for the 
people to read. Moreover in each of the universities, 
after the students have finished their circuit in philoso- 
phy, as many cf them as are designed for the ministry, 
are lectured first of all on that book" 

Heylen, an enemy of Calvin, says, of the reign of 
Elizabeth, under whom the English Church was settled 
upon its present foundation, " predestination and the 
points depending thereupon, were received as the estab- 
lished doctrines of the Church of England,." 

That these were the principles of the early fathers of 
that church during the reign of Henry VIII. and Edward 
VI. is equally certain. Their choice of Peter Martyr 
and Bucer, both Calvinists, as the first professors of the- 
ology at Cambridge and Oxford, are the strongest possible 
demonstrations of this fact. In their writings we firictthe , 
doctrine of election, of jhe saints perseverance, and kin- 
dred points, continually insisted upon, as cardinal points 
of the gospel. 

The following passages are offered as specimens. 
Tindal says : " God's elect cannot fall, that they rise not." 
Paul preacheth predestination, whence it springeth alto- 
gether, whether we shall believe' or not believe." 

Cranmer, says : " This article speaketh of the elect, in 
whom finally, shall no faultbe, but they shall perpetually 
continue and endure. We wretched sinners do not pre- 
vent God or go before him in the work of justification, 
but it is God that layeth the first foundajjjon of our sal- 
vation." 

Bradford the Martyr, says " Faith is the work and gift 
of God, given to none other than those whom God the 
Father, before the beginning of the world, hath predesti- 
nated in Christ to eternal life." 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 137 

Homily for Whitsunday. " Man of his own nature is 
sinful and disobedient, without one spark of goodness in 
him. without any virtuous or godly motion."* 

Testimonies of this kind might be swelled to any ex- 
tent ; indeed they already fill six large octavo volumes, 
as collected by the Rev. Legh Richmond, in his Fathers 
of the English Church, from which the above extracts 
are taken. No historical fact can be clearer than this, 
that the men, who in these latter days insist so strongly on 
High Church principles, as the standard of churchman- 
ship, are chargeable with a departure from the early prin- 
ciples of the Episcopal Church. In exposing what we 
deem their errors, therefore, we are not only defending 
ourselves against that spirit which unchurches every other 
denomination, but we are speaking in behalf of those in 
the Episcopal Church, who are reviled and persecuted, 
for adhering to the faith and catholic principles of Cran- 
mer, Latimer, Jewell and Ridley. 

There are many in this country who embrace the same 
sentiments, and with such we have no difficulty, even on 
the ground of their ecclesiastical preferences, so long as 
they are not made exclusive. It is natural for us to feel 
strong attachment to the modes of worship, in which we 
have been educated. Our love for religion itself becomes, 
in some degree, identified with an attachment to that with 
which it has always been associated. But when we hear 
the principles and institutions of our churches pointedly 

* The reader will observe how careful these writers were to cut 
off the evasion afterwards resorted to by Arminians, viz : that men 
are elected on account of their foreseen faith. The very existence 
of faith itself, they say, is the thing contemplated in predestination. 
Men are chosen to be made believers, not because they will become 
believers. 

12* 



138 THE '-CHRISTIAN -CITIZEN!. 

condemned, as a departure from the ordinances estab- 
lished by Christ ; when such sentiments are zealously in- 
culcated, in conversation, from the pulpit, and through 
the press in almost every part of our country ; when 
those who would join our communion, are repressed with 
the most solemn admonitions, that they are departing 
from the appointed way of salvation ; and when all this is 
associated with the severest reprobation of the doctrinal 
sentiments maintained in our churches, we think, that 
we are called upon to speak in our defense, and to ex- 
amine the principles of those who are thus unsparing in, 
their condemnation of ours. ; 

It is not our .intention however, at present, to inquire 
farther into the foundation of these high pretensions. 
Their utter futility has been a thousand times demon- 
strated. It is indeed a striking fact, that they were 
never put down with a stronger hand, or trampled more 
triumphantly in the dust, than by Episcopal writers, es- 
pecially by Bishop Stillingfleet and Sir Peter King, and 
more recently, by Archbishop Whately of Dublin, and 
others equally attached to the English Establishment. 
Leaving this part of the subject in their hands, we shall 
offer some general remarks on the system of high church 
and Arminian principles, more especially as maintained 
by the followers of the late Bishop Hobart. 

4. The conditions of salvation as laid down by the high 
church writers, are in our view, diametrically opposed to the 
Word of Gad. The Scriptures divide the whole human 
family into two great classes, those who are in a state of 
condemnation, and those who are in a state of grace or 
favor with God. The former are described as "-children 
of wrath," the latter as the " children of God-'> The 
one as "alienated" and " enemies in their minds by 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 139 

wicked works ;" the other as " reconciled " to God and 
members of Christ's body. The one as having " no hope 
and without God in the world ;" the other as " partakers 
of the promises " and made " heirs of the kingdom " of his 
dear Son. 

The most important question, that can be asked this 
side of the eternal world, is this, What is that change in 
man, which translates him from a state of condemnation 
into a state of grace or favor with God ? 

The followers of Dr. Hobart answer, Baptism : and in 
this sentiment we suppose most high churchmen coin- 
cide. " In this regenerating ordinance (baptism) fallen 
man is born again from a state of condemnation into a 
state of grace" " Our church," says Dr. Hobart in his 
volume of sermons, " in all her services, considers bap- 
tized Christians (i. e. baptized persons) as regenerate ; as 
called into a state of salvation; as made members of 
Christ ; children of God ; heirs to the kingdom of heaven." 
Now, we ask, is it possible to affirm more strongly, that 
the simple act of baptism prepares the soul for heaven ? 
It makes its subjects " heirs of the kingdom," " children 
of God," " in a state of grace or salvation."* True, they 
must continue in this state, must go on to repent of sin 
when committed, and to put their trust in Christ, to the 
end of life. But that great change in their character and 
condition, without which no man can see the Lord, is ef- 
fected by baptism ! This makes them in a moment " chil- 
dren of God," and should any individual among them die 
at that moment, he must of course be saved. Now, we 
ask, is this the doctrine of the New Testament ? Can 
the act of a fallible man thus remove the condemning sen- 

* See Companion for the Altar, p. 186. 



140 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

tence of God, and secure the salvation of trie soul ? The 
supposition, all will agree, is impious, unless the renew- 
ing influence of the Spirit, does invariably attend the ad- 
ministration of the ordinance of baptism. But where in 
the whole Bible have we any intimation of such a fact 1 
What too, is the testimony of experience on this subject ? 
Do all baptized persons in the Episcopal church give evi- 
dence of that great spiritual change, which is so entire 
and absolute, as to be termed "life from the dead?" Are 
they without exception crucified to the world, and the 
world crucified to them 1 The utmost stretch of charity 
will not authorize the supposition.* 

* In this unscriplural sentiment, we are aware that Episcopalians 
are sustained by the express terms of their prayer-book, which speaks 
of baptism in the following terms — even incorporated into the lan- 
guage of prayer. " We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Fa- 
ther, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this Infant with thy Holy 
Spirit; to receive him for thine own child by adoption, and to incor- 
porate him into thy holy church." And again, ' ! Then shall the min- 
ister say, Seeing, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regen- 
erate, and grafted into the body of Christ's church by baptism," &c. 
The Rev. Mr. Melville, of Camdon Chapel, after referring to the 
above expressions, says, " We really think no fair, no straight-forward 
dealing can get rid of the conclusion, that the church holds what is 
called baptismal regeneration." He adds, " So long as I officiate 
according to the forms of (the) prayer-book, I do not see how I can 
be commonly honest, and yet deny that every baptized person is, on 
that account, regenerate." What he means by this regeneration is 
not so clear, for he adds, " the church does not hold that all who are 
thus regenerate, can never need any further moral change, in order for 
fitness for heaven ; and yet he says again, " he is born again from above." 
No wonder that many evangelical and consciencious of this church 
feel that the prayer-book should be "reformed." Is this regenera- 
tion by the Spirit, and salvation by grace 1 It is not perhaps gener- 
ally known, that the prayer-book was compiled chiefly from the three 
services, morning, evening, and the litany, oi the Roman Catholic's 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 141 

The apostles too — did they act like men who believed the 
rite of baptism to be- invariably followed by deliverance 
from condemnation, and the renewal of the heart from on 
high ? Why, then, all their labors, reasonings, exhorta- 
tions, and entreaties to bring their hearers to Christ, when 
they had. only to baptize them at once : and by " this re- 
generating ordinance," instantly to place them in a " state 
of salvation V No ! In all the directions which the 
apostles gave to sinners, as recorded in the Acts, baptism 
is never alluded to but once, and then as following, not 
leading to faith in Christ. This outward rite they uni- 
formly represented as the mere symbol of a spiritual 
change which was supposed already to have taken place. 

" Can any man forbid water," says Peter, " that these 
should not be baptized . ? " But why baptize these men % 
To place them in a " state of grace " — to give them " a 
title to the influence of the Holy Spirit ?" No ; but because 
they " have received the Holy Ghost as well as we." 
Acts x. 47. How could the apostle more directly contra- 
dict the high church principles ? Considered in this 
light, as a mere symbol of a change already experienced^ 
it is not surprising that so little stress was laid on bap- 
tism by the apostles. " Christ," says Paul, " sent me 
not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." How different 
would have been his language if he had ever imagined, 
that baptism was invariably followed by renewing inrlu- 

. '•-' * j ____ — 

liturgy, &c. While it is vastly improved from this, it needs a further 
revision to render it either safe, or consistent with the Word of God. 
No wonder that Archbishop Whately says, " I should be deficient in 
candor and truth, if I did not acknowledge that I think our liturgy 
susceptible of improvement." So thought Tenison, Wake, Seeker 
and Porteous, and so think thousands more who are compelled to 
use it. 



142 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

ences from on high ! Regarded in this light, the power 
of administering it, is the most awful and momentous pre- 
rogative ever conferred on man. Armed with such power, 
the apostle had only to persuade men to receive the wash- 
ing of water at his hands, and they were instantly con- 
verted, made " children of God," and " heirs of the king- 
dom." 

But these pretensions reach still farther. Others with 
Dr. Hobart declare, that " the only mode through which 
we can obtain a title to those blessings (of the gospel) is 
the sacrament of baptism." " Repentance, faith, and obe- 
dience," he says, " will not of themselves be effectual to 
our salvation." Other high churchmen know and believe 
nothing to the contrary of this, and the practical effect 
therefore is precisely the same. Here, we apprehend, is 
if possible a still more direct contradiction of the Word of 
God. " REPENt, that your sins may be blotted out." 
" Thy faith hath saved thee." " Believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." " The gospel is 
the power of God unto salvation to every one that believ- 
eth." " In every nation, he that feareth Him, (God,) and 
worketh righteousness is accepted of Him." Such are the 
conditions of salvation as pointed out in the Scriptures. 
Not one word is said of baptism or peculiar church rela- 
tionship as indispensable to salvation, and as if to silence 
all pretensions of this kind, in a single sentence, God has 
added, " Circumcision (to which baptism succeeds as a 
different form of the same rite,) is nothing, and wra-cir- 
cumcision is nothing, but a new creature ;" proving 
demonstrably, that the new birth is not only something 
entirely distinct from any outward rites, but wholly inde- 
pendent of them. Such are the contradictions to the 
Word of God involved in the sentiments in question ? 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 143 

5. We would now turn, for a moment, to consider the 
influence of such doctrines, on the spiritual state of those 
who are educated in their belief, 

Nothing can be more certain than this, that all the scrip- 
tural representations of the condition and character of men 
by nature, are deeply humbling and painful. Their direct 
tendency is to alarm the sinner, to lay him low in the dust 
before God, and to drive him to utter despair of relief from 
any human intervention or aid. They urge him to instanta- 
neous and unreserved submission to God. Even in the 
most distinguished saints, we see the evidence of this hum- 
bling tendency. " I abhor myself," says Job, " and repent 
in dust and ashes." " I was shapen in iniquity," says the 
Psalmist, " and in sin did my mother conceive me." " Oh, 
wretched man that I am," exclaimed Paul, in view of the 
deep depravity of his heart. Now we ask, is there not 
the utmost danger, that impenitent sinners, under the in- 
fluence of the sentiments in question, will fall entirely 
short of any such views of their character and condition 1 
Is there no one whose eye now rests on these pages, to 
whom the language just quoted from the scriptures, seems 
strange and unaccountable 1 Is it not the tendency of the 
views in which multitudes are educated, to make them 
believe that their depravity is trifling, since it requires 
only such easy expedients to remove it ? Do they not 
feel that it is removed, and its curse avoided by the sim- 
ple reception of ordinances — that they have only to be 
baptized, confirmed, and to continue in the observance of 
stated rites, and they are regenerated, their sins washed 
away, and themselves made children of God, and heirs 
of the kingdom of heaven 1 They enter on a course of 
religious duty ; they have been made christians by bap- 
tism ; they observe the services of the church ; — they 



144 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

hold a constituent part in divine worship ;— all along with 
which, they are told, the grace of God is connected^ and 
that by it, they are cultivating their good feelings or reli- 
gious natures — "nourishing that grace which is given to 
every man to profit withal." At length they are confirm- 
ed, at which time, it is announced to them, that the- .Holy 
Ghost is imparted, and as they rise from the rite of con- 
firmation,* they are saluted as " children of the kingdom 
and heirs of heaven." Having taken on themselves the 
vows of their godfathers and godmothers, and received 
the last ordinance of consecration from one professedly 
delegated to open the kingdom of heaven, they are re-as- 
sured of " a title to all the privileges and blessings of 
Christ's purchase." 

Now what is the influence of all this on the unsuspect- 
ing disciples of this system ? Do they not imagine that 
they are sure of salvation, if they simply persevere in the 
course on which they have thus entered ? As they have 
been baptized, they think of course, and they are taught 
to believe so, that they " have a title to the kingdom of 
heaven.'" Every repetition of prescribed devotional ser- 
vice, becomes an advancing step in their sanctification. 
The responses and observances of the sanctuary, rise 
every sabbath, as additional securities of God's-vfavor. 
We have had too much experience in this kind of service 
and in these sentiments, not to be fully persuaded of'the 
certainty and baneful effects of this influence. A right- 
eousness is thus created in the soul, which is neither bor- 
rowed from the Redeemer's merits, nor perfected by the 
Holy Spirit. It is a righteousness wrought out by the 

* Where is there any authority in the Bible for such a ceremony !! 
Where ? 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 145 

simple and easy service of church prescription. Here 
the sinner rests his hope ; and is told on authority which 
he has no wish to question, that while repentance, faith 
and obedience, will not of themselves be effectual to his 
salvation, this is " the mode" and the " only mode" of se- 
curing a " title to the blessings and privileges of Christ's 
purchase." Who under the belief of such a system, 
would not feel sure of salvation, in proportion to the mul- 
tiplication of prescribed ordinances? If pressed with 
the necessity of a spiritual regeneration, their answer is 
ready, " It has already commenced, and we are advancing 
cheerfully forward to its full completion." How is it pos- 
sible for such persons to listen with any but indignant 
feelings, to pointed statements of their guilt and danger 
as sinners ? What necessity can there be, in their view, 
for that violence spoken of in the scriptures, with 
which men are to press into the kingdom of heaven? 
Where is the need of that armor of Paul, the panoply of 
God, to meet and conquer the powers of hell ? Such 
things they consider as belonging to a different state of 
society, and as having no just or natural application to 
themselves. We appeal to every man who has preached 
to such persons, with a seriousness and pungency bor- 
rowed from the word of God, whether he has not found 
his instructions fall utterly powerless on their minds, and 
whether the whole tendency of this system, is not to lock 
up the soul in a state of fearful insensibility to their real 
condition, in the view of Him who searcheth the heart? 

(a) We do not wish to say it invidiously, but we are utter- 
ly unable to discover how the thorough going High Church 
doctrine on this subject, differs from that of the Papists. 
An exclusive divine right to confer a" title to salvation," 
is claimed equally by both. It is the opus operatum, the 

13 



146 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

outward act, which in the view of both secures this title, 
" There is no salvation out of the Roman Church," is the 
axiom of the one ; and we find much the same in the de- 
clarations, " Baptism is the only mode," etc. and, " I have 
yet to learn where a promise to fallen man is to be found, 
that is not limited on the previous condition, that he be a 
member of the visable ( i. e. ) Episcopal Church upon 
earth."* We have no disposition to run the parallel far- 
ther. It is with pain that we have alluded, at all, to these 
remains of the " old doctrine" amongst any members of a 
Protestant church. 

Yet we are constrained to ask, in the nature of the two 
systems, what is the specific difference 1 We can disco- 
ver but little if any, save in the extent to which abuses 
may have been carried. In the structure of the two sys- 
tems there certainly is something like identity. Melville, 
while exposing the errors of Romanism, says : " That 
which made us a part of this church, was the acknow- 
ledging the Pope as our ecclesiastical head, and that which 
dissolved our union with this church, was the refusing to 
continue such acknowledgment." We agree with the Ox- 
ford Episcopalians as to this affinity. We are not sur- 
prised, that they deny the right of Episcopacy to claim 
the Protestant name, and war against every thing Protes- 
tant within the pale of the prelacy. " The Churches of 
Rome, of England and France," they say, " are one and 
the same," and it is a matter of regret that we are sepa- 
rate from Rome."f 

* Bishop Ravenscroft. 

t One of the Oxford divines, says : " I utterly reject and anathe- 
matize or curse the principle of protestantism, as a heresy, with all 
its forms, sects or denominations." See Mr. Ferguson's Lectures p. 10. 
Palmer's Letters and Tracts for the Times. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 147 

(b.) The opinions and practices under review, seem to us to 
destroy that broad distinction between sin and holiness, the 
righteous and the wicked, which enters so deeply into man's 
present character and future prospects. Their advocates 
address their hearers alike ; presupposing in all, that in- 
fusion of grace or principle of moral goodness, which only 
requires a careful cultivation in all, to ripen to the full 
maturity of holiness. They do not admit that there is 
any radical distinction among men, which has been crea- 
ted by a change of their moral natures. They are not 
accustomed therefore, to bring home the searching truths 
of inspiration, and lay them, with the authority of the 
Almighty upon the consciences of men ; and we are not 
aware, that the preaching of this class of divines is cal- 
culated to disturb the conscience of the sinner, or to cre- 
ate "a belief in that plague of the heart, which God pro- 
nounces desperate wickedness. All men are suppo- 
sed to have some goodness from the beginning, and are all 
along treated as the gospel treats those only, who are new 
creatures in Christ Jesus. " The preachers of this 
school," says the London Christian Observer, " address 
their auditors almost promiscuously as Christians, because 
professedly and by the sacrament of baptism they are 
such. Our view, on the other hand, is, that a large por- 
tion of them, are not Christians, except in name ; and 
should, therefore be addressed, not merely as needing to 
be exhorted to higher advances in goodness and virtue, 
but to become Christians in the spiritual sense of the term." 
The'se remarks were called forth by the following passage 
from the Sermons of the late Bishop Hobart. " No limit 
can be prescribed to all persons, beyond which, indul- 
gence in pleasure is sinful. The variety in the constitu- 
tion of human character, and the difference of strength 



148 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 



in the passions of different individuals, places at different 
degrees, the point, where indulgence becomes sinfuL" 
Well does the Christian Observer add, " We are alarm- 
ed at the oversight, that gave birth to this passage and 
the consequences to which it might lead, especially in the 
volume in which it appears. We see nothing in all the 
Bible warranting allowance in pleasure, (we know not of 
what kind) according to the strength of passion in differ- 
ent individuals."* 

To what does this want of discrimination in preaching 
directly lead ? As it arises from a want of discrimination 
in regard to truth and religious experience, it leads to a 
want of discrimination in respect to Christian character 
and communion. It is saying to all, except those who are 
too grossly wicked to believe it, that they are Christians. 
Is it not a fact indeed, that most of the congregation are, 
at some period of their lives, invited and urged to partake 
of those ordinances, which are the divinely appointed 
seals of experimental piety % And thus, under a fatal de- 
lusion, many indulge in those pleasures of life which 
the gospel forbids, and in a conformity to the world, 
wholly inconsistent with the piety it enjoins. We know 
that the preachers of whom we now speak, sometimes al- 
lude to a future and endless retribution of misery. But 
surely the " heirs of the kingdom of heaven," " the children 
of God," cannot consider themselves as exposed to such 
a doom. Such are the accustomed address and instruc 
tions of these preachers, that few, if any, are found suffi- 
ciently depraved, within the circle of their ministrations, 
to feel that they deserve such tremendous punishment, as 



* Review of Bishop Hobart's Sermons in the London Christian 
Observer. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 149 

any evil must be, that is eternal. If we mistake not, 
their congregations as a body, feel as one common family, 
moving on together, under the saving culture of their reli- 
gious services, and the favor of God, with the assurance 
of his everlasting complacency. This we cannot but be- 
lieve is destroying the very foundation of the Christian 
system, and has less of practical virtue and efficacy, than 
is found in the code of civil law : and that bright feature 
of our jurisprudence, that makes exposure to eternal pun- 
ishment the security of its oaths, is more evangelical than 
such ministrations. 

It is a belief in native grace, or a remnant of moral 
goodness in the heart, together with the supposed efficacy 
attached to baptism, which leads to this indiscriminate 
treatment of the mixed multitudes of a worshipping as- 
sembly. And this of necessity destroys the scriptural dis- 
tinction between the righteous and the wicked ; for it will 
be remembered, that most, if not all, have adopted " the 
mode" and " the anly mode" of securing " a title to the 
blessings and privileges of Christ's purchase," and have 
those native and nurtured principles of resemblance to God, 
which are said to expand into the perfection of holiness. 
How natural is it ,that a confidence and hope should thus 
be engeadered, which rest not on any distinct sense of 
union of soul to Christ, not on a feeling of unreserved 
submission to the law and government of God, against 
whom we were conscious of having stood forth in the 
attitude of rebellion, but on a hope built upon man's na- 
tive and cherished fitness for God's eternal presence and fa- 
vor, which at once sweeps away the fear of eternal wrath, 
from every soul that has been brought under the protec- 
tion of High Church ordinances, 
(c.) It is owing to this fact,we conceive, that Unitarianism 
13* 



150 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

has always made so little progress, in a community where 
High Church principles, are prevalent. There is no de- 
mand for Unitarianism in such a community. Are any 
offended with that kind of preaching which shows man 
his utterly depraved and ruined condition, and which sends 
him for relief to an almighty Savior, they can find a 
refuge from such humbling and painful admonitions, un- 
der the soothing messages of those, who treat all their 
hearers as made "heirs of God" in baptism, and as need- 
ing only the steady culture of inherent grace, to prepare 
the soul for heaven. It is not, to any great extent, the 
speculative question of the Trinity, which makes men 
Unitarians : it is a settled dislike of the doctrine of man's 
entire want of holiness by nature, and his dependence on 
special and distinguishing grace for the renewal of the 
heart. Where these doctrines can be escaped on easier 
terms, few will find any inducement to become followers 
of Arius or Socinus. And had it not been for the deci- 
ded piety and evangelical sentiments of that portion of 
the Church of England to which we have affectionately 
alluded and the indomitable spirit of civil liberty, 
the Arian and Socinian classes of England would 
probably have found the thirty-nine barriers of the Es- 
tablishment less formidable and her shade more expansive 
and refreshing : and even now, how many of this char- 
acter may be found reposing under its august protection 
and ample patronage, with consciences too tender to be 
guilty of the " damning sin of schism," we are not called 
upon to decide ; yet we have our fears, and the'sighs and 
prayers of holy men in that venerable communion, assure 
us that all is not right. 

We have already intimated, that the foregoing remarks 
are applicable not to the Episcopal Church as such, bat 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 151 

to a portion of its members who have departed from the 
catholic principles, and self-abasing doctrines, of its ori- 
ginal founders. Concerning this defection, many of the 
most pious and devoted members of that church, both in 
England and America, have publicly spoken in terms far 
stronger than any which we have used. Believing the 
principles in question to be unscriptural and dangerous, 
we cannot be expected to see them urged industriously 
on those of our own communion, without occasionally 
expressing our sentiments. And we speak with feelings 
of entire kindness towards those from whom we differ. 
It is against principles, and not men, that we have 
spoken ; and our earnest prayer is, that all parties, on 
this subject, may feel with the excellent Hooker, that 
" ten words spoken in the spirit of meekness, are better 
than volumes of controversy." In this it is our purpose 
never to engage. 

We have expressed our convictions, that the principles 
before us, with that necessary formalism which attends 
them, are subversive of the gospel plan of salvation. In 
this opinion we wish to avoid the charge of unchari- 
tableness, or to share it with those of whom the world is 
not worthy. There is a charity which we neither covet, 
nor feel it safe or creditable to Christianity to cherish at 
all. And as we have relied almost exclusively upon the 
firm friends of the Episcopal Church for our support of 
other opinions, we shall here rest for our vindication at 
the present time. 

The respected and learned prelate of the Ohio diocese, 
Dr. Mcllvane, viewing the sentiments before us, in the 
same light that we do, as utterly subversive of the doc- 
trine of justification by grace, has given to the public his 
most extended and able work in its vindication against 
the attacks of Episcopal writers, and we can urge no 



152 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

stronger adverse arguments, than fill the pages of this 
review of Oxford divinity. We only wonder and regret, 
that with such clear and distinguishing views of truth, 
and of the way of salvation, any man can stop short of 
the rejection of the whole system of formalism and eccle- 
siastical exclusiveness, which environs and chills, as 
with mountains of frost, the catholic spirit and tendencies 
of a divine Christianity. 

We close this array of evidence in support of our posi- 
tions, and in justification of our course in this brief 
review, with the able and Christian expostulations of 
Archdeacon Hare, whom we recognize as a bishop of 
the Episcopal Church of England. 

"I cannot but make mention of a notion," says he, 
" which has been brought forward somewhat prominently 
by certain very amiable and pious men in our days, — 
namely, that our Lord's promise was not made to the 
collective body of His church, to that body of which He 
is the Head, the blessed communion of all faithful peo- 
ple, in all nations and through all ages, — but that it was 
confined to the apostles exclusively, as the supposed 
representatives of the Episcopal body, — and that none 
are embraced in it, none must flatter themselves they 
have the slightest share in it, except the same Episcopal 
body unto the end of the world. You would join with 
me, I would fain hope, in the earnest desire to purge 
our church from all remains of that Judaizing Romish 
superstition, which would wrap up the free spirit of 
the gospel in the swathing bands of forms and cere- 
monies, and would tether it to a name." 

" That amiable and pious men should have taken up 
such a notion, which leads straightway to the most 
revolting conclusions, — according to which the chief 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 153 

part of Protestant Christendom is cast out at once by a 
sweeping interdict from the pale of Christ's Church, nay, 
is recklessly declared to stand on a level with the heathen, 
and to be left to the uncovenanted mercies of God, — 
that able and pious men should not shrink with awe from 
such a notion, that they should take it up under anything 
less than the clearest, most compulsory, most irresistible 
demonstration, — that they should not look carefully and 
anxiously round for some mode of escaping from such 
appalling conclusions, — might be deemed unaccountable, 
if we did not remember how prone we all are to convert 
every object of our peculiar interest and affection, even 
the objects of our purest worship, into idols. This is the 
last wall of the citadel in which the selfishness of man 
takes refuge and barricades itself ; and it can hardly be 
thrown down altogether, so long as we continue here 
below. Our form of government must be the only good 
form of government, not because it is a good one, but 
because it is ours. Our church must be the only church, 
not because it is founded on truth, — few examine its 
foundations ; still fewer examine the foundations of other 
churches with patience, and candor, and honesty, and a 
righteous self-distrust : no, our church is ours, and there- 
fore it is the only true one. We still cannot bear to 
think that the veil of the temple should have been rent ; 
we still cannot bear that the Gentiles should have a free 
approach to the Holy of holies ; we cannot bear that our 
neighbors should come to it by any other road than ours. 
* * * I can only express my regret that, where such 
strong arguments in favor of Episcopacy may be drawn 
from the history and idea of the church, many of its 
advocates, not content with proving that it is the best 
form of church government, have resolved to make out 
that it is the only one, and have tried to rest it upon 



154 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

scriptural grounds, which in fact only weakens their 
cause. For I cannot discover the shadow of a word in 
the gospels to counterbalance the interpretation referred 
to. Feeble and flimsy as are the scriptural arguments, 
on which the Romanists maintain the inalienable pri- 
macy of St. Peter, they are far more specious and plau- 
sible than those derived from the same source, on the 
strength of which it has been attempted to establish the 
absolute necessity of Episcopacy to the existence of a 
Christian Church." 

" Let us, my brethren, carefully beware of that most 
hurtful and narrow-minded of monopolies which would 
monopolize the grace of God. The way to life is narrow 
enough: let us not throw up any fresh mounds by its 
side, to render it narrower still. Let us rejoice that 
the salvation which Christ wrought for his people is 
not tied to any one form of church government or 
other, — to anything that man can set up, or that man 
can pull down. Let us rejoice that in Christ Jesus 
nether Episcopacy availeth anything, nor anti-Episcopacy, 
but a new creature. Let us rejoice that the gospel was 
to be preached to all nations, and that all nations were to 
be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost." 

The little regard which has for some years been paid 
to the principles under review, and the almost uniform 
disposition of religious denominations in this country, to 
leave each other in the undisturbed enjoyment of their 
respective and peculiar preferences, as to doctrine and 
forms, might have justified us, in the view of many, in 
passing them unnoticed at this time. And we should re- 
joice, had the advocates of these doctrines and principles, 
been contented to enjoy them, within their own commu- 
nion, without claiming the right to invalidate the basis of 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 155 

all other churches, and to proscribe, as unscriptural and 
vain, all ministrations but their own. These exclusive 
pretensions entrench, not alone upon the rights of other 
churches, but they corrupt the truth, and counteract the 
influences of our common Christianity, and thus make 
war upon the dearest rights of mankind. And we are 
not alone in feeling the necessity of such a review, as 
we have given. Many others are deeply feeling the 
same, and with their characteristic intelligence and chari- 
ty are speaking plainly, and admonishing of the evils, 
which they apprehend necessarily result from the princi- 
ples before us.* 

It is not sectarian officiousness, nor desire for contro- 
versy that has governed us. We are all directly interest- 
ed in these things, for they relate to mind, and mind is 
the common property of man every where. " Truth 
is every man's concernment, every man's right and every 
man's most 'necessary possession." These things belong 
to the heart, whose ceaseless pulsation is the electric life 
of the world. No man can entrench himself in his 
church or beneath the dignity of office or station of Go- 
thic antiquity and strength, with ' Noli me tangert,' in- 
scribed on his portals. He lives and acts on mind, on 
souls immortal. No man lives unto himself. No man 
dies alone. We are members one of another, and as the 
heirs of a common Christianity, are bound to unite in the 
warm charity of its spirit for its universal spread. 

* Without concert or interchange of views, we find Dr. Duffield, 
of Detroit, Rev. M. Smith of S. Car., Dr. Bethune of Philadelphia, 
Rev. M. L. R. P. Thompson, of Canandaigua, Rev. N. Murray, of 
New Jersey, &c. in connexion with many of the Episcopal Church, 
vindicating their views of the gospel against the urgency of exclusive 
principles — showing that it is not the morbid sensibility of a solitary 
mind alone that is affected. 



156 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. ^ 

li In proportion as the gospel is understood, in its puri- 
ty and its power ;— in proportion as it is felt to be a 
spiritual religion, (its) independence of whatever is local 
and risible will the more appear ; not indeed to the dis- 
paragement of visible institutions ; but to the higher glory 
of the spiritual reality. It seems scarcely to need proof, 
that any system of opinions, the purport and tendency of 
which is to give an unusual prominence and a paramount 
importance to visible institutions, and especially as histo- 
rically and geographically defined, and which with a se- 
vere consistency, denies the very name of christian to 
whatever may be found beyond its pale, or may not ac- 
knowledge its jurisdiction ; that such a system, so far as 
it takes effect, stands opposed to whatever is the most 
auspicious in the present age, and if permitted to work 
its will, must turn back the current of human affairs a 
thousand years, and would confine the blessings of the 
gospel within limits narrower than those of ancient Juda- 
ism. These exclusive opinions, so fondly embraced by 
many, are indeed, 5 a discipline of the secret,' likely 
enough to bury the gospel in a cloister, along with the 
last hopes of happiness for mankind." 

Denying the " independence" and vitality of the gos- 
pel under whatever forms of "visible maintenance," we 
shall find ourselves M . driven farther and farther from what- 
ever is substantial, whatever is benign, whatever is rea- 
sonable in the Christian system, until we find a gloomy 
home, not in a church, but in a sepulchre."* 

We have reluctantly come to the conclusion ; rather 
we have been driven to the conviction, that the English 
prelacy is now, and has been separate from the papacy, 

* Taylor's Spiritual Christianity, Am. Ed. pp. 223-25. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN". 157 

not from an}* native or original incongruities, but from 
the force of private animosities and political alienations. 
And but for geographical distinctions, and the respective 
heads of these two hierarchies, we see no insurmountable 
obstacles in the way of their speedy and cordial reunion. 
Hence we perceive the reasonableness of Puseyism, in 
the heart of the Episcopal communion, warring against 
the state affinities of the church, as unnatural and de- 
manding a revulsion arid return to the bosom of that an- 
cient fraternity, whence the prelacy sprung. And to this 
day, it is doubtful whether the Reformation would not have 
been saved her severest check, and the pious been more 
completely separated from Romish corruption, had Henry 
VIII. remained " the defender of the faith," in conflict 
with Luther and the Truth, instead of becoming the ene- 
my of Rome, and the head of the Church of England. 
As it is, truth and error are so blended ; formalism and spir- 
itual Christianity so closely allied, that there must be col- 
lision — there must, be conflict, till such opposing princi- 
ples are more widely separate. And it is the rising and 
remonstrating spirit of the one, that has summoned forth 
the redoubled energies of the other. Well has Dr. Pu- 
sey, declared, " Two systems of doctrine are now, and 
probably for the last time, in conflict — the Catholic and 
Genevan." Let the issue be joined. The world is pre^ 
pared for it. It may now be the conflict of argument, 
and not of arms ; of mind redeemed, free, sanctified. Let 
charity be our spirit, truth our weapons, and God the umpire* 
And it is equally true, that a corresponding spirit is 
abroad in the world. Two classes of civil institutions, 
are now, if not for the last time, in conflict for the maste- 
ry — the free institutions of law and equality, and those of 
will and arbitrary distinctions. No one can mistake their 
14 



158 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN, 

respective religious affinities, their influence on the popu* 
lar mind, their claims to the confidence and support of 
every Christian citizen. 

It is as such, that we feel bound to meet, in charity 
and argument, the lofty sentiments before us. The confi- 
dence with which they are urged, with all their claims to 
venerable antiquity, neither intimidate nor overawe us. 
And it is more in defense of our own principles, than of 
aggression upon those of others, that we speak at all. 
The advocates of high church exclusiveness and formal- 
ism, are not silent as to the triumphs of their cause, nor 
inactive in urging its claims. Their predictions of ad- 
vance are clear and confident, and we admit their just- 
ness, more in pity to them, than in mortification at the de- 
feat of others. It is possible, that in the amplitude of 
their increase, and the easy terms of their communion, 
the severer requisitions of the gospel may be excluded, 
and in the enforcement of formalism, or its acceptance as 
the conditions of grace, there may be forfeited the vital 
energies of the atonement, and the spirituality of religion. 
The extension thus gained is but the '''extension death im- 
parts to the body" when the soul has fled.* 

And while there is so much in these principles, de- 
manding our attention, as citizens of a free state, and 
above all as probationers for eternity, it cannot be ex- 
pected, that under existing circumstances, we should pass 
them in silence, or fail to canvass their claims, and if ne- 
cessary resist their advances. We regret the neces- 
sity which their advocates have imposed upon us to 
do so. 

In the language of Mr. Ferguson, " it is because we 
cannot — we dare not concur in such views and senti- 

* Robert Hall. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 159 

merits ; — it is because such doctrines not only insult our 
reason, but offend our common sense ; it is because we 
believe them to be in direct opposition to the word and 
will of God, and injurious — dangerous to the interests of 
his church and the souls of men, that we now venture to 
oppose them." We are called upon by the advocates 
of these principles, " to choose our side," assured that, 
" to remain neuter much longer, will be itself to take a 
part." This we have done long before now, and as Pro- 
testants, and as Christians, we are willing to abide the 
issue. 

Recent events, beginning with that most remarkable re- 
trogression in England, in our view more threatening to 
her piety and her church, than were the Normans to her 
state securities ; that strange sympathy which it receives 
in this country, and which seems diffusing its influence, 
waking up that spirit which animated the beast of the 
Apocalypse, and which, in the form of the second, would 
heal the wound of the first,* and inflict death upon the 
sacred interests of truth, freedom and grace ; lay upon 
the friends and advocates of a spiritual religion, and the 
civil rights of mankind, a most solemn obligation. " I 
speak plainly," says Dr. Bethune, "but the time has 
come, when the advocates of a spiritual Christianity, 
must speak out. Silence now would be falsehood, unre- 
monstrant submission to opinions, that would exclude us 
from the Church of God, and desecrate our sacraments, 
treason to the truth and disloyalty to Christ." We come 
forward in the name of no party, but speak what every 
Christian minister should speak in defense of truth, and 
what every Christian citizen should seriously review. 

And we hope, that the advocates of these principles, 

* See Revelations, xiii. 11 — 15. 



160 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 

will themselves re-examine the ground of their defense, 
and their legitimate workings on the civil and religious 
interests of mankind. 

We have seen ecclesiastical institutions greatly modi- 
fying the forms of civil government, and as we have ever 
found, " monarchy in the church conducive to monarchy 
in the state and quite as perilous to civil freedom," if 
our government is to be regarded in the light of an ex- 
periment, or if we have come to the conclusion that the 
" oxygenized element of democracy, too pure in itself for 
human respiration,"* cannot be endured ; nor the mingled 
principles of our " constitutional confederacy," be success- 
fully carried out, it is possible, that in no way, can a 
revolution more easily or safely be brought about, than 
by inculcating the principles of prelatical, diocesan Epis- 
copacy, " that more efficient support to monarchy, than a 
standing army."f For the more remote results, we will 
not be answerable. 

It is certainly a remarkable fact, that these principles* 
after being so ably defended, and so vigorously urged, for 
centuries, should have made so little progress with the 
intelligent portion of the Christian world. They have 
had the patronage and support of the proudest govern- 
ments on earth, with professed divine and exclusive rights, 
and yet the prelacy, separate from its papal associations, 
is the most limited communion of the whole family of 
nominal Christians. Is the human mind so dull ; the 
heart so unyielding, that no arguments can enlighten 
and no motives persuade to the acknowledgement of 
truth? These exclusive principles, though urged through 
centuries of darkness, and the Augustan ages of learn- 
ing, down to the present hour, reason and conscience 

* See Mr. Adams' Lecture on the Nature of Government, p. 3 i. 
t Charles II. of England. 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 



161 



remonstrate, and reject their claims. Must not their 
foundation be defective 1 At least, we think their advo- 
cates must despair of securing for them, at this late day, 
anything like a permanent basis or a general prevalence. 
Other denominations have arisen and filled the world with 
the light of truth and the charity of God. Unsustained, but 
by their own instinctive vitality, and the exhaustless re- 
sources of their faith, hope and charity, they now advance 
in strength and triumph; heathen millions converted, 
their trophies, and the light of the promised day, heaven's 
attestation to their right and succession to the covenant 
mercies of God. 

But we find no> such proportionate growth for the prin- 
ciples under review, and no such fruits of their adminis- 
tration anywhere.* And Ave are not aware, that there are 
any unusual difficulties in their way from their hostility 
to the common principles of our depraved nature. They 
are not singularly hostile to the indulgences of the flesh, 
nor at war with the innocent fashions and habits of life. 
Compare the period of the " Commonwealth " and the 
two reigns succeeding. The difficulty cannot lie here. 
Must it not be found in the cause itself? 

We are free to say, that we do not envy the circum* 
stances to which the advocates of these principles are 
subjected, and we regret that limits so restricted, confine 
and cramp their greatest minds. They seem entrenched 
in narrow bounds, like Sampson grinding at the mill of 

* The reputed' extension of the English Church in the East Indies 
and elsewhere, under the patronising auspices of the government, 
leaving heathenism to absolute idolatry almost entirely unchecked, 
we cannot receive as evidence of the actual advancement of hicrh 
church principles, in intelligent communities. Nor can we easily 
measure the exact extent of the English hierarchy at home, while its 
affinities to the state remain. 

14* - 



162 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN". 

the Philistines. The world is losing the aid of their 
strength, and the light of their genius. We lament their 
strong attachment to an exclusive system ; unknown to 
primitive Christianity • which, springing from the corrup- 
tions of the church, grew to eollossal greatness amid ages 
of night, and lived into the light, only from its identity of 
interests with dynasties of oppression. And v/e wonder 
at the fondness, with which they fasten to its wasting 
strength, resolute, like the blinded Nazarite at Gaza, cling- 
ing to the pillars of the temple, only to die amid its ruins. 

We are constrained to ask the friends and advocates of 
High Church principles, if they are not doing injustice to 
themselves, as well as unkindness to others, in such per- 
severing exclusiveness and rigid formalism 1 In excom- 
municating every other church, and entrenching them- 
selves in limits so narrow, may they not also, be doing 
•violence to the law of love, and the spirit of Christ ? 
May they not lose the breathings of that charity, the pul- 
sations of that piety, which is the communion of the saints, 
and the foretaste of life everlasting ? They may indeed 
repose in all the complacency of the heirs of the " Celestial 
Empire," the robed Mandarins of pre-eminent sun-light 
and glory, but like the walled inmates of that remote and 
exclusive land, they appear dark to surrounding beholders, 
and lost to the rich benefits of this enlightened age, pro- 
pitious for doing and getting good. 

We should esteem it the highest honor of a free citizen, 
\o bestow the boon of universal liberty, and hail as free- 
men, the whole brotherhood of man : and it would be the 
richest happiness of our earthly state, cordially to unite 
with every follower of God, in instructing and saving the 
world from the bondage of error and death, to the honor 
of our common Redeemer. And whatever obstructs or 



THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN. 163 

impairs this union, opposes the purposes of mercy, and 
keeps back the millennial state of man. 

The enlightened and commercial community claim, 
upon the principles of national fraternity, that China, shut 
out for ages in pride and contempt of the world beside, 
shall open her vast territory to the ingress of nations, and 
if necessary, would demolish her wall of separation, for 
her own enlightenment and the reciprocal benefit of man- 
kind. Of the morality of this, we have nothing to say. 
But on the principles of a common Christianity, and the 
universal brotherhood of mankind in sin and in the prof- 
fer of salvation by Christ, there can be no exclusive ter- 
ritories, no separating walls : all truth is free ; error has 
no shelter from discussion and invasion. With these prin- 
ciples, we approach the advocates of an exclusive reli- 
gion, in love ; ever believing in the high law of " Christian 
expansion ; the active law of evangelical diffusion ;* in 
the duty, charity and union of all believers under Christ, 
to regenerate the world. 

And of this we are not to despair. We know there is 
a radical and reckless spirit in religion ? a wild " democ- 
racy," which in its actings alone upon the state, is u deadly 
as the uncombined element of oxygen," and in the church, 
kindling the very fires of fanaticism. It may now be seen 
in faint resemblance to the burning and bloody terrors of 
the Ana-Baptists of the sixteenth century, and thephrensy 
of the " fifth monarchy men," of the commonwealth of 
England. 

We will say nothing of " democracy" in the state ; but 
we will say, that we have no fears of an aristocracy here,, 
in any form. But while we have the wild and levelling 
spirit of ignorant religionists, assuming wisdom without 
learning, superior holiness without practical piety ; vio- 
lent in denunciation and reckless; we have also, as we 



164 THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN". 

have seen, an aristocracy in the church, feeble indeed in 
numbers and influence, but assuming and exclusive. 
Not unlike the broken down, emigrating Cavaliers of the 
wasted dynasties of the Stuarts, never forgetting their 
original alliance to the remnants of royalty ; it would 
look even in its weakness, with equal lordliness, on eyery 
other denomination, and exclude from the covenant mer- 
cies of God, the whole family of Christ. But it has not 
the sword, and probably never will have. It may secure 
a species of governmental favor, but this, in whatever 
form enjoyed, has never advanced the piety of the church. 
What is it in England, but a curse ? In Scotland, but 
the incubus of death 1 We seek, we would have, no suc- 
cession for a spiritual religion to state endowments, nor 
take from Caesar any rights or immunities, but such as 
Christian citizens, we may claim upon the ground of our 
common citizenship, " The Bible and the Bible only, is 
the religion of Protestants." And we have here the same 
sentiments, the same principles, that ruled in the Reforma- 
tion, that reigned through the English persecution, that, 
held in check the fiery spirit of extravagant Independents 
and Enthusiasts, and at the same time, mitigated the se- 
verities of an imperial prelacy, and broke the iron sceptre 
of the 'man of sin.' Under their "expansive" power 
and u evangelical diffusion," we would go on "unto per- 
fection." 

And though discordant and jarring elements may con- 
fuse the multitude, and darkness long reign, with these 
tried principles of a "simple" and "spiritual" Christian- 
ity, trusting in the grace of God, and faithful, we shall see 
the spirit of the Lord moving upon the face of the wa- 
ters ; confusion and night pass away ; — the order, beauty 
and glory of a regenerated world, shall usher in the pro- 
mised day ^realizing to the believer the fullness or God. 



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